Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF A MEMBER

Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Sir Arthur Beverley Baxter, Member for Southgate, and I desire on behalf of the House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the hon. Member.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

Death Grant

Mr. Randall: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will give statistics regarding the number of applications and appeals for death grants which have been refused on the death of invalids from childhood unable to satisfy the contribution conditions for death grant, and who were beyond an age where entitlement could be claimed on their parents' insurance.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): I am afraid that this information is not available because separate records are not kept of these cases. Under the 1964 Act, which came into operation last month, these persons will qualify for death grant on the insurance of the parents up to the age of 19 instead of 18.

Mr. Randall: Whatever the figures may be, in the view of some hon. Members there are 100 per cent. too many. Does not the hon. Lady agree that the present arrangement whereunder the parents of children 19 calendar years of age but only five years of age physically are denied the death grant is a matter which ought to receive the attention of the Government, and is not the need reinforced because these parents are unable to take on any private insurance and the young person reaching the age of 18 is not capable of being insured? In the circumstances, having regard to the great hardship which many parents have suffered because of the appalling burden of keeping such children for a number of years already, will not the Government do something in the matter?

Mrs. Thatcher: My right hon. Friend is not unsympathetic towards these cases, and we recognise that they command a great deal of sympathy. However, there is the difficulty that death grant is a benefit of the National Insurance Scheme and, consequently, is paid against a record of contributions.


As the hon. Gentleman has said, most of these young people have not yet paid any contributions at all and have probably been on a National Assistance grant.

Miss Herbison: Since these young men and women are able, after reaching the age of 16, to get National Assistance in their own right, would it not be possible for the Minister to consider the possibility of a death grant being made payable through the National Assistance Board, if it is the age of the child and the contribution record which makes it impossible to pay under the present system?

Mrs. Thatcher: I think that it would be much more fruitful to pursue a line through National Assistance rather than through National Insurance in view of the inherent nature of the scheme. My right hon. Friend already has this in mind.

War Service Pensions

Mr. Holland: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what provisions exist for an appeal against his decision in the case of claims for service disability pensions awarded under special sanction; and whether he will introduce amending legislation to improve the present position regarding appeals related to such claims.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Richard Wood): Awards under special sanction can be made in certain circumstances where no award can be made under the ordinary Pensions Instruments. As these awards are in my discretion, subject to the agreement of the Treasury, there is no foundation for any formal right of appeal. But anyone who claims a pension can discuss his case informally with his local war pensions committee, whose recommendations are carefully considered.

Mr. Holland: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, but will he concede that even members of the medical profession are sometimes human and, therefore, fallible? With that in mind, does not he agree that there might be a case for a more formalised procedure to make it possible to look a second time at the primary decision even in special sanction cases?

Mr. Wood: I assure my hon. Friend that I am perfectly prepared to look very sympathetically at any of these claims. It would be very difficult to establish a formal right of appeal, because there happens to be no right under the Royal Warrant itself. It is essential that we should preserve a discretionary approach, particularly because some of the evidence in support of these claims is now 40 or 50 years old. I believe that, if there is a discretionary approach, this is in the long run in the best interest of pensioners.

Retirement Pensioners (Budget Increases)

Mr. Prentice: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will reintroduce tobacco coupons for retirement pensioners in order to offset the hardship that will arise from the additional cost of cigarettes and pipe tobacco following the Budget.

Mr. Wood: No, Sir.

Mr. Prentice: Is the Minister aware that most of us would prefer to see a substantial rise in pensions rather than anything like the reissuing of tobacco coupons? Has he nothing to say about the effect of the Budget on the pension of those who have to eke out their pension to the last penny and for whom a rise of 5d. an ounce in the price of tobacco and 1d. a pint in the price of beer can be a very great hardship?

Mr. Wood: The hon. Member said that he would prefer to see an increase in pensions. He will have noticed that there are three Questions on that topic later this afternoon.

Mr. Lipton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether, in view of the additional burdens imposed by the recent Budget, he will increase old-age pensions.

Mr. A. Lewis: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether, in view of the recent change in the financial circumstances of old age pensioners, he will now increase old age pensions.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if, in view of the increase in


the cost of living which has been further raised by the tax increases in the Budget on tobacco and alcohol, he will consider increasing retirement pensions.

Mr. Wood: No, Sir.

Mr. Lipton: Why is it always the Government's policy towards old-age pensioners to give with one hand and take away with the other? Does not he realise that the recent additional burdens imposed by the Budget have greater effect on old-age pensioners who like to drink and smoke than on any other section of the community? Does he at least accept that?

Mr. Wood: To go back a little, between 1946 and 1951—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—I know that the hon. Gentleman does not like to be reminded of it—the value of the pension steadily declined. The last increase in 1963 was 17 per cent., to take account of an increase in the retail prices index of 8 per cent. Since then, the index has risen by 1½ per cent., and the Budget will add less than 1 per cent. Thus the pension has still a far greater value than before the last increase. I believe that the single rate is worth more than £1 more than when we took office.

Mr. Lipton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that old-age pensioners do not eat, smoke or drink percentages? Will he, therefore, give a very much better reply about this before the next General Election?

Mr. Wood: Retirement pensioners are interested in the real value of their pension, which is higher than it has ever been.

Mr. Hilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, even before the Budget increases on tobacco, the majority of old-age pensioners and other pensioners were spending up to the limit and then were going short? Is he not aware that these increases will impose an additional burden on them? Will not he reconsider his decision and take these additional burdens into account?

Mr. Wood: As I have pointed out, the increase last year has more than taken account of the increase in the retail prices index.

Wage Stop

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance at what level the wage stop is imposed by the National Assistance Board for general labourers in Scotland, North-East England, the Midlands, London and the South-East, respectively.

Mrs. Thatcher: The level of the wage stop is based, as the National Assistance Regulations require, on what the individual might expect to earn if he went back to work. There is accordingly no standard wage stop figure for all general labourers in these regions.

Mr. Bence: Is the hon. Lady aware that I have had a number of cases from the National Assistance Board in the Burgh of Clydebank where the wage stop has been applied on the recommendation of the Ministry of Labour at the basic wage which men would receive if they worked, but as all labourers working in any of the industries in that area receive a bonus, should not the wage stop be the basic wage plus the average bonus paid?

Mrs. Thatcher: The wage stop is the amount which the man might expect to earn if he went back to work in the occupation for which he is registered. We reckon that this normally includes a figure for overtime. I am not sure about the bonus point, but, if the hon. Member has any individual cases, I will gladly look into them.

Mr. Bence: I have brought cases to the notice of the hon. Lady in which this very situation has been revealed. I am not talking about overtime. The wage stop applied was £8 10s., whereas had that man been working in any of the factories in the district he would have received another 20 per cent. production bonus out of the factory's bonus system. That £8 10s. should be about £9 15s.

Mrs. Thatcher: I am now seized of the hon. Member's point. I do not recollect any individual cases which he has brought to me personally. However, if he would put them to me I will gladly look into them.

Mr. Manuel: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance which criterion, previous average weekly earnings or basic weekly minimum wage, is


taken into account before the wage stop is applied to applicants for National Assistance.

Mr. Thatcher: The Board bases the wage-stop figure on the net earnings a man could expect if he returned to work in the occupation for which he is registered at the employment exchange.

Mr. Manuel: Would the hon. Lady recognise that we are dealing here with the poorest section of the community where this wage stop is applied? On what criteria does she base her Answer? Is there a proper liaison with the Ministry of Labour to find out what earnings should be earned by a particular person to whom the wage stop is applied? How is that she says that a person has this wage stop applied, who has been earning overtime for, say, the previous month, before he became redundant? Is that to be the criterion on which it is applied? Or is it applied on some hypothetical situation which may never arise?

Mrs. Thatcher: It is based on a forward prognosis of what he would get. I recognise that within the general principle we apply there may be scope for argument as to how much the amount would be. We consult very closely with the Ministry of Labour. This is done by the Board's area offices and the local employment exchanges. We do our best to arrive at a figure which is equitable for all concerned.

Mr. Manuel: Would the hon. Lady not agree that if, as she says, there is scope for argument about it there is surely at least scope for examination of the problem to see if the proper principles are being applied? There could be injustice brought into this, the most hard-hit part of our community.

Mrs. Thatcher: I think that the general principle is almost universally acknowledged, so far as I am aware. It is that a person should not get more by way of assistance than he would get if he were to start work in an occupation for which he is registered.

Mr. Manuel: That is not the point we are dealing with.

Mrs. Thatcher: Having applied that principle, one has to try to find out how much the amount in any particular case would be. If there are particular cases,

perhaps the hon. Member would send them to my right hon. Friend or to me or to the Chairman of the Board.

Sickness Benefit

Lord Balniel: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will amend the regulations which disqualify a person from receiving sickness benefit whilst abroad so that persons who are chronic invalids and in receipt of sickness benefit shall not be deprived of such benefit if they take a limited holiday abroad on the advice of their doctor.

Mr. Wood: The regulations already allow such people to go on receiving their benefit if they are abroad temporarily in order to be treated for their disability.

Lord Balniel: I thank my right hon. Friend for that Answer. Would not he agree that it seems rather hard that a person who is chronically sick and in receipt of sickness benefit, who saves up and takes a very limited holiday abroad on the advice of his doctor for the general interest of his health and not for specific treatment, when he has the honesty to declare this fact to the local Ministry of Pensions office should be stopped from receiving his sickness benefit? Will my right hon. Friend look at this matter again?

Mr. Wood: I will continue to look at this matter. It is a difficult problem, as my hon. Friend knows, because clearly the incapacity from illness which can be checked and controlled if a person remains in this country is more difficult to check and control if he is abroad. However, I will look at what my hon. Friend said.

Mr. Manuel: The hon. Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) was talking about a limited period. Can the Minister indicate how many times the individual is examined? Would not many of the cases instanced by the hon. Member he within the period when normal examinations take place and on which there would be no check?

Mr. Wood: When people are in this country, we obviously have the facilities to check incapacity for work.

Mr. Manuel: How often?

Mr. Wood: It is done in a great many cases. If the hon. Member will put a


Question down, I will give him the exact figure. But there are problems here, and I will certainly continue to look into them.

Bronchitis and Emphysema

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will publish the figures available from his Department's inquiry into the incidence of incapacity for work, especially in so far as they relate to the incidence of chronic bronchitis and emphysema among mineworkers, by comparison with citizens in other occupations.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Lieut.-Commander S. L. C. Maydon): Yes, Sir. We expect to publish a detailed report on the inquiry in the autumn. It will include figures for a group of diseases comprising all forms of bronchitis, bronchitis with emphysema and emphysema without mention of bronchitis. The details normally given on medical certificates for sickness benefit claims are not sufficiently precise to allow the different types of disease within this group to be separately compared for the purpose of the inquiry.

Mr. Swingler: Will this show clearly a comparison between the experience of those working in coal mining and those working in other occupations, and will it therefore give us direct evidence on what is the commonsense experience of so many people in the mining areas who feel that chronic bronchitis and emphysema are industrially caused diseases of coal mining?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: It will certainly take into account the experience of people employed in mining and each of the occupation groups listed in the General Register Offices Classification of Occupations, 1960, of which there are 220. Each of these groups will be accounted for, and will also be analysed in areas. I think that that will cover the hon. Member's point.

Mr. Wainwright: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman realise that the incidence of pneumoconiosis and emphysema is so great as to create a false impression of a man's disability? A man with a disability of 20 per cent. pneumoconiosis and 30 per cent. emphysema is almost

incapable of working below ground. It is not the 30 per cent. emphysema but the impact of the pneumoconiosis on the emphysema which creates the tremendous disability. Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman look into this problem in its entirety?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: I most certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that some diseases have a far more incapacitating effect in certain occupations than in others. I think that that is widely recognised. But, as the hon. Member knows, we are bound by two rules under the Industrial Injuries Act: whether a disease is common to the generality of people or not, and whether it can be attributed with reasonable certainty to the occupation.

Mr. Prentice: Is not this a point on which the Industrial Diseases Schedule should be amended within a very short time? If a man is disabled by pneumoconiosis directly attributable to work in the mines and emphysema which is either attributable to it or aggravated by it—if the two go together making him a very sick man—is it fair to compensate him only for the pneumoconiosis?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: That is not the case. I think that the hon. Member misunderstands what is done in cases of this nature. Where there is a prescribed disease causing disablement, that is properly assessed. But where also there is a connected disease which is not prescribed but which has a further disabling effect, that is also taken into account in the assessment of disablement.

Bronchitis and Pneumoconiosis

Miss Herbison: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what was the source of his information that more wives of miners suffer from bronchitis than miners; and if he will give the relative figures.

Mr. Wood: I am sorry that my Answer to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) last Monday was rather imprecise. I had in mind the Registrar General's last Decennial Supplement on Occupational Mortality, which shows that the mortality from bronchitis among coalmine workers under the age of 65 was 35 peg cent. higher than in the general male population of the same age, but for the wives the comparable figure was 75 per cent.

Miss Herbison: Does not that show then that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Sir B. Stross) said earlier, there ought to be much more examination by the Minister of the connection between pneumoconiosis and general chest disability?

Mr. Wood: I think I told the hon. Lady last week that I was very ready indeed to consider any evidence which she or her hon. Friend, or any other source, liked to produce for me about the connection between bronchitis and any particular employment.

Miss Herbison: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance in how many instances from 1st January, 1961, to the latest available date the Pneumoconiosis Medical Board, in assessing percentage of disability, attributed part of the disability to hypertension, thus reducing the benefit the man might otherwise have been awarded.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: I regret that this information is not available.

Miss Herbison: Does the Minister realise that a great many of these men who are examined for pneumoconiosis have a certain percentage of disability assessed but are not given industrial injury benefit because part of the disability is due to hypertension? Will he have this examined to see if there is any connection at all, as some medical people believe, between hypertension resulting from pneumoconiosis? Would he also find out something which, one gathers from his reply to the last Question, he did not know? There are many hundreds of men who are told by hospitals that they have pneumoconiosis, and by the Board that they have not. The Minister ought not to wait for one single example to be supplied by any hon. Member.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: I will take the hon. Lady's last point first. I told her in a previous Answer to an earlier Question that errors occur, and we acknowledge that. However, the errors are small. Some claimants not diagnosed by the Board as having pneumoconiosis are found on subsequent death to have the disease, but the number is small. Similarly, errors occur the other way round. Obviously, there

will always be errors in such matters. Medical questions, however, such as the assessment of disablement, are entirely matters for the independent statutory authorities.

Miss Herbison: Again I should like to ask the Minister—I think all in the House know that it is for the statutory authorities to decide—whether he will set up an inquiry to find out if there is any connection between pneumoconiosis and resulting hypertension?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: We will certainly consider that question, but again, as the hon. Lady knows, when the assessment is made for a prescribed disease account is always taken of other diseases which are not prescribed but which may have a contributory effect.

Pneumoconiosis

Sir B. Stross: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many persons in the latest year for which figures are available came forward for examination by pneumoconiosis panels; how many were rejected on X-ray examination and without any clinical examination; how many appealed; and in how many cases the appeal was successful.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: During 1963, 13,861 claimants received preliminary X-ray examination. Of these, 10,493 were unsuccessful. For the same year, there were 906 appeals dealt with by clinical examinations, of which 35 were successful.

Sir B. Stross: Do not these figures suggest that very great reliance is placed by the pneumoconiosis panels on their first X-ray examination, when there is not necessarily any clinical examination? In view of the fact that replies given by the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretaries in the past have shown that this is not entirely reliable, could not we have a review of the techniques and rely less on X-ray examination, and may we not ask for clinical examination in each and every case?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: I cannot agree with the first part of the hon. Member's supplementary question. It is a fact that many miners and others use this machinery to satisfy themselves that they are free from the disease, and


the high standard of reading of X-rays is borne out by the very small proportion of successes among those who appeal.
On the second part of the hon. Member's supplementary question, any unsuccessful claimant can have a full clinical examination, if he wants one, by appealing. It would certainly be a very wasteful use of the limited number of medical experts available had they to spend their valuable time carrying out a large number of unnecessary clinical examinations.

Sir B. Stross: Will the Joint Parliamentary Secretary explain how it is that of 10,000 rejected cases, fewer than 1,000 are ultimately examined clinically? Is not this evidence of the fact that the machinery is not working properly?

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: The ready explanation is that of the 10,500 unsuccessful claimants, only 906 considered it worth while to appeal. The large majority of them were only having an X-ray to satisfy themselves that they had a clean bill of health.

Miss Herbison: As the Minister seems to be placing such reliance upon the efficacy of X-ray examination, can the hon. and gallant Gentleman explain how it is that a man is X-rayed in one of the big teaching hospitals, a specialist in lung diseases diagnoses the X-ray plate and says that the man has pneumoconiosis and then the pneumoconiosis medical board says that he does not? Surely, there is a great difference at times in the diagnosis even of X-ray plates by supposed specialists.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: The hon. Lady will, I am sure, realise that it is unwise to establish a general rule from particular cases. If, however, she has a case in mind, I shall be glad to look into it.

Miss Herbison: Surely, the Minister must answer——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must make more progress. Only seven Questions have been answered so far.

Deferred Retirement

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what would be the increased cost to the

fund if all pensioners who worked after the age of 65 years were to have their extra weekly pension rate based on 1s. for each 12 stamps on the contribution card.

Mrs. Thatcher: Increments are awarded on this basis to men who have deferred retirement beyond the age of 65 since August, 1959. If the current rates were to be applied in respect of contributions paid after minimum pension age before this date, the extra cost would be about £7 million a year immediately. This assumes that contributions paid by women after 60 would be treated similarly.

Mr. Wainwright: Does not the hon. Lady believe that it is time that men who continued working up to the age of 70 and women who continued working up to the age of 65 and who retired on 2nd August, 1959, or later should be brought up to date with other pensioners who retired later? Does not the hon. Lady consider that the Insurance Fund should be fair to all pensioners and should pay them all equally?

Mrs. Thatcher: The increments are related to the amount of pension which is forgone and they are increased from time to time. They are not intended to compensate completely for the amount of pension which a person would have received had he retired earlier.

Mr. Wainwright: Does not the hon. Lady realise that these people have forgone quite large sums by working after the age of 60 or 65, in the case of men and women, respectively? Does the hon. Lady not think, therefore, that to pay them at the rate of 1s. per twelve contributions on their card would be more equitable bearing in mind the amount of money which they have lost by working from 60 to 65 and from 65 to 70 for women and men, respectively?

Mrs. Thatcher: They would then not in any way be increments which were related to the amount of pension that is forgone. Increments have risen from time to time but so have pensions. We have never accepted that any increase in increments should entail retrospective increases to people who have retired earlier.

White Paper (Estimates)

Dr. Bray: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what standard rate of basic pension was assumed, or is implied, in the estimates of public expenditure in 1967–68 published in Command Paper No. 2235.

Mr. Wood: The estimates in Command Paper 2235 carry no implication about the rates of particular benefits in 1967–68. They are a financial projection, at 1963 prices, of the Government's policies. The assumptions which relate to benefits and assistance are given in paragraph 21 of the White Paper. The increase in expenditure of £360 million would represent a substantial improvement in real terms.

Dr. Bray: Is the Minister not being just a little bit coy about this? Is he aware that the paragraph to which he refers suggests that pensioners must stick to the guiding light whatever happens to other incomes generally? Does not the Minister feel that the actual rate of pension implied in that paragraph, whether he likes it or not, should be announced, so that a public debate can take place about whether this is a fair method of handling pensions?

Mr. Wood: No, Sir. I do not think that it would be desirable because, as the hon. Member will agree, a number of assumptions are contained in the White Paper, and one of the important assumptions is that of constant prices. All I can say at the moment is that if the expenditure of £360 million were added to the existing expenditure, even despite the increasing number of pensioners who would then qualify, the general increase in benefits would be considerable.

Married Women (Separation)

Dr. Bray: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will introduce legislation to ensure that a woman pensioner separated from her husband derives at least the same benefit from her husband's National Insurance contributions as a divorced woman.

Mr. Wood: No, Sir. A wife separated from her husband is treated for retirement pension purposes in the same way as any other married woman and is at a

general advantage compared with a divorced woman.

Dr. Bray: Is the Minister aware that this is a difficult problem and that he is quite right in saying that generally the separated woman does at least as well, but that there are cases in which she does substantially worse? Will he not consider the particular cases which have been directed to the attention of his hon. Friends the Joint Parliamentary Secretaries and see whether amending legislation should not be put in hand to bring these difficult cases within the scope of the law?

Mr. Wood: As the hon. Member knows, the difficulty time and time again in National Insurance is that we are dealing naturally with large groups of people, and it is difficult always to take account of particular cases within those groups. I believe that it is the case, as I think the hon. Member admits, that in general separated women have an advantage over divorced women; but there may be hard cases. I know that the hon. Member has been in correspondence with my hon. Friend and I am certainly prepared to look at any individual cases which he likes to send me.

Dr. Bray: Will the Minister at least state the principle that where there are loopholes and where separated women are getting a smaller pension, he will consider legislation to amend this anomaly?

Mr. Wood: No, I cannot go as far as that. Although separated women may, in certain cases, be getting a smaller amount than divorced women, they are eligible for other benefits, such as the widow's pension, for which the divorced woman is not eligible.

National Assistance (Price Increases)

Mr. W. Hamilton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what guidance he has given to the National Assistance Board to take into account in their assessment of the needs of recipients of assistance the recent increases in the prices of milk, meat, tobacco, spirits, and beer.

Mr. Wood: This is a matter for the Board.

Mr. Hamilton: The relationship between the Ministry and the National Assistance Board is precisely what we do not know. Will the Minister nevertheless agree that at least most of the items mentioned in the Question are regarded as much more essential by old people than by most other sections of the community? In view of the fact that the Budget placed heavier burdens proportionately on these people than on any other section of the community, will not the right hon. Gentleman have informal consultations with the National Assistance Board to bring this point to its attention?

Mr. Wood: Naturally, I am always in touch with the National Assistance Board about these matters. There are three Questions on the alleged rise in the cost of living caused by the Budget which will be reached a little later, and perhaps the hon. Member will raise the point then.

Mr. Hamilton: I do not know why the Minister should talk about the alleged rise in the cost of living. This is a fact which can be measured by the old-age pensioners themselves, as I have learnt in my constituency. Will not the Minister bring this fact to the attention of the Board?

Mr. Wood: The hon. Member is going rather beyond his Question, which asked what guidance I had given. I have suggested that I have not given guidance and that this is a matter for the Board.

Wage-Related Unemployment Benefit

Mr. Lawson: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he has yet reached a decision on wage-related unemployment benefit; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Wood: I have nothing to add to the reply I gave on 24th February to a similar question from the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton).

Mr. Lawson: Will the Minister bear in mind that this is now established practice in most of the advanced industrial countries? Will he also bear in mind that the Labour Party for a long time have advocated this? Will he further bear in mind that National Insurance contribution on a worker's earnings

now is markedly higher proportionately to the benefit he gets?

Mr. Wood: I think the hon. Member has demonstrated that there are some very important questions to examine, and that is why this is taking some time.

Graduated Pension Scheme

Mrs. Cullen: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what pension a man will receive who has contributed at the maximum rate since the inception of the graduated pension scheme and retires in 1975.

Mrs. Thatcher: On the unlikely assumption that no changes in pension rates or contribution liability have been made by 1st June, 1975, a man of 65 then retiring would receive a total pension of £4 5s. 6d. (single) and £6 7s. (married) and a man of 70 £5 11s. (single) and £8 3s. (married).

Mrs. Cullen: Surely this is a farcical amount? Surely the Minister could agree that this is not a pension scheme—that it is really a tax measure to avoid new taxes and the Government carrying out their responsibility?

Mrs. Thatcher: I cannot agree that the amounts are farcical amounts. I think that if one takes account of the increasing benefit paid to an increasing number of beneficiaries one must expect to have both increasing contributions and taxes.

Earnings Rule

Mr. J. Robertson: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what would be the estimated cost of allowing men in receipt of a National Insurance pension to earn an extra 20s. weekly before applying the earnings rule.

Mrs. Thatcher: About £½ million a year.

Mr. Robertson: Does the hon. Lady not agree that this is not too great a cost for lessening the anxieties which accrue to, and adding to the enjoyment of, old-age pensioners? Is her right hon. Friend contemplating a review of the situation?

Hon. Members: Where would the tax come from?

Mrs. Thatcher: I notice that the hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. J. Robertson)


is much more favourable towards women than men. The extra cost would be £2 million a year if it were applied to them as well. The amount was quite recently—last month—put up to 100s., the fourth rise in the last five years, and is now a higher percentage of average earnings than ever before.

Mr. Lawson: Would the hon. Lady tell us by how much the amount is reduced to arrive at that? How much is knocked off?

Mrs. Thatcher: I cannot deduce the meaning behind that supplementary question.

Mr. Lawson: The earnings rule says how much a man may earn. The amount is not paid on that basis. It is reduced. It is reduced to a given figure which the Board operates. Can the hon. Lady tell us by how much, as a rule, the figure which is first laid down is reduced?

Mrs. Thatcher: The Question does not arise from National Assistance but from National Insurance pensions. The Question refers to National Insurance pensions and the cost of an extra 20s. weekly before applying the earnings rule.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Lawson: The same rule applies in both cases—

Mr. Speaker: We are not doing ourselves credit today. Only 18 Questions have been answered by 3.9 p.m.

Family Allowances

Mr. Prentice: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will review the level of family allowances in view of the fact that more large families are now living on an inadequate diet than 10 years ago.

Mr. Wood: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) on 20th April.

Mr. Prentice: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn to the report of Dr. Lambert on this matter? What does the right hon. Gentleman propose arising from the evidence that, over the last ten years, the nutri-

tional standard of families with three or four children has gone down? Since the real value of family allowances has declined in that period, is there not an urgent need for adjustment?

Mr. Wood: As I pointed out last week, the deficiencies in the large families which the hon. Gentleman has, quite rightly, noted are not confined to the lowest income groups but are common to all income groups. This suggests that it is not only a matter of income. It is only fair to remind the hon. Gentleman that family allowances are only one element in the improvement in nutrition. More important elements, perhaps, are welfare foods and school meals.
I would also remind him that family allowances for large families have been increased twice since 1951. They not only have a higher value themselves but they supplement other income, and one must take into account the very considerable increases in wages and salaries, and the improvements in other social service benefits.

National Assistance (Rents and Rates)

Mr. Lipton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance why it is not possible to state a sum representing the part of expenditure on National Assistance which is attributable to rent and rates.

Mrs. Thatcher: Rent is only one of several factors, including resources, in the assessment of assistance grants. In many cases the sum granted is less than the sum allowed for rent in the process of assessment.

Mr. Lipton: Is the hon. Lady aware that that answer means nothing? Does she recollect that last week the Minister announced that in about one and a half million cases the full rent was being allowed by the National Assistance Board? If we assume a ridiculously small rent of £1 a week, does not that mean that the Board at the present time is paying out at least £1½ million a week in the form of subsidies to landlords? Is this not what it boils down to? Does the hon. Lady also accept that, since 1957, the outgoing from the Board in respect of rent has vastly increased?

Mrs. Thatcher: The hon. Gentleman does not think much of the answer, but if he knew more about the subject it would mean more than it does now to him. If he had read the reports of the National Assistance Board for the last two years, he would not have needed to ask a question on the point of principle. If he refers to those reports, he will find the assessment of needs and resources very clearly set out.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Brucellosis

Mr. Kitson: asked the Minister of Health if he will make brucellosis a notifiable disease; and if he will make a statement.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Bernard Braine): No, Sir. I am advised that notification would be of little practical value because of the length of time that may elapse before the disease is recognised.

Mr. Kitson: Is my hon. Friend aware that this is very unsatisfactory and that England, Scotland and Wales are about the only countries in Europe where brucellosis is not now a notifiable disease? As there have been serious outbreaks of the disease, will not he ask the Minister to look into the matter again?

Mr. Braine: Our experience in this country is that delay in recognising the disease makes notification of very little help in tracing the source of infection. As my hon. Friend probably knows, the disease is not normally transmitted from man to man but is the result of contact with infected animals or by drinking infected milk. The best way to deal with it is by routine examination of untreated milk. However, in view of what my hon. Friend has said, I will ask my right hon. Friend to look at our arrangements again.

Animal Diets (Non-nutritive Substances)

Miss Quennell: asked the Minister of Health what investigations his Department have made into the possible effects of the various non-nutritive substances introduced into the diets of animals upon the consumer.

Mr. Braine: None, Sir, but my right hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are advised on these matters by expert committees.

Miss Quennell: I thank my hon. Friend for the facility of his Reply but will he bear in mind that his Department could helpfully advise the Minister of Agriculture that many of the substances in use, such as pesticides, for instance, have, after a lapse of time, had unforeseen side-effects which had they been anticipated would have saved much distress?

Mr. Braine: This may be the case, but non-nutritive substances such as my hon. Friend has in mind are liable to be considered under the Veterinary Products Safety Precautions Scheme. This is a matter which is under constant scrutiny.

Sir B. Stross: Has the hon. Gentleman noted the fact that the Minister of Agriculture tends to be on the defensive on this matter when he is questioned in the way in which the hon. Lady the Member for Petersfield (Miss Quennell) has questioned the hon. Gentleman? But the Minister of Agriculture is concerned with cattle and agricultural substances while the Minister of Health has a duty to look after human beings. Will the hon. Gentleman, therefore, accept the implication in the hon. Lady's Question and see that his right hon. Friend makes an investigation into what is happening to us?

Mr. Braine: I hold no brief for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—in this context. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health receives advice from the appropriate body and I assure the hon. Gentleman that he looks at it very closely.

Maternity Services

Miss Quennell: asked the Minister of Health what action he is taking to promote the greater use of the existing maternity services by expectant mothers.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Anthony Barber): Advice on the importance of making full use of these services has


been widely circulated and is regularly emphasised in health education material put out by the Ministry.

Miss Quennell: Surely this does not make a very great impact. Does not my right hon. Friend realise that in our figures for infant mortality we lag behind the progress being made in some other countries? For example, if we had the same proportionate figures as Sweden 4,000 lives would have been saved last year. Will not my right hon. Friend, therefore, give extra emphasis to what is being done so that existing services can be more widely known and more fully used?

Mr. Barber: As I expect my hon. Friend knows, doctors in hospitals, G.P.s, midwives and health visitors all play their part in encouraging expectant mothers to take advantage of the services which are freely available to them. Of course, they can only encourage; they cannot compel. For example, there is the leaflet entitled "Maternity Care", a copy of which is sent to each expectant mother with the book of tokens for welfare milk. If there is anything more we can do, I will be happy to do it.

Prescription Charges

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Health if he will now exempt patients being treated for coronary thrombosis and diabetes from payment of the 2s. per item prescription charge.

Mr. Barber: No, sir. There are already adequate arrangements for refunding prescription charges in cases of financial hardship.

Mr. Pavitt: Apart from the continuing unfairness: that those who are most sick have most to pay; will not the right hon. Gentleman do something about the health hazard to patients with coronary thrombosis? Is he aware that the usual treatment of 100 tablets of trinitron costs 1s. 4½d. and that many patients go straight to the chemist, thus saving 7½d. in cash and getting quicker prescriptions, which means that angina patients are not seeing their doctors regularly? This is a danger to the patient. Will the right hon. Gentleman regard it from that point of view and not only from the financial angle?

Mr. Barber: To exempt any group of patients, however one defined that group, from payment of prescription charges without reference to their means would be unfair to the patients in comparable and sometimes less favourable financial circumstances. I am informed that a patient requiring long-term treatment for coronary thrombosis would probably not require more than two drugs simultaneously and that a month's supply could often be prescribed.

Mr. Pavitt: As more tablets are needed, will not the right hon. Gentleman issue advice to general practitioners to give greater quantities, so that at least patients will be encouraged to go to their doctors and not just to their chemists?

Mr. Barber: That I am very happy to do.

Physiotherapists

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Health what limitations on the expansion of training for physiotherapists still exist as a result of the shortage of teachers of physiotherapy.

Mr. Braine: The number of training places cannot yet be increased.

Mr. Boyden: Is this due to a shortage of teachers of physiotherapy, to a lack of financial resources or to a shortage of buildings? Surely there is a great lack of facilities because of a shortage of staff. Why cannot facilities be increased?

Mr. Braine: As the hon. Gentleman guesses, this is due entirely to a shortage of teachers which has persisted since the beginning of the National Health Service. We are now discussing with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy the introduction of a more attractive course of a duration of less than two years in an attempt to bridge the gap.

Drugs

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Health what conclusions he has reached following his consideration of the March 1964 report of the city of Birmingham analytical laboratories on the subject of the Birmingham drug-testing scheme.

Mr. Braine: I have nothing to add to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave to the hon. Lady on 13th April.

Mrs. Butler: Would the hon. Gentleman at least confirm that proposals for an independent central drug authority for the licensing of drug firms and to undertake the sampling of drugs at all points in the chain of distribution have been circulated to all the interests concerned following the appalling revelations from Birmingham? Would the hon. Gentleman say by what date he expects to receive comments and when he proposes to introduce legislation?

Mr. Braine: I am not sure that I can answer the last part of the question. I will take note of it and communicate with the hon. Lady. The report from Birmingham is disturbing. It has already been decided to review the statutory arrangements for the control of the quality of drugs, but conclusions have not yet been reached on that. This is only one aspect of the legislation connected with medicine which, as the House knows, is being reviewed. The problem is very complex and needs careful and detailed study if it is to be tackled effectively.

Mr. Edelman: asked the Minister of Health (1) whether he will make a statement on the contracts which he is placing with three British firms to import drugs from Poland and Italy for the hospital service;
(2) on how many occasions he has invoked section 46 of the Patents Act, 1949, to enable the National Health Service to obtain cheap supplies of drugs from unpatented sources abroad; and what is the total value of drugs which he has so obtained.

Mr. Barber: The contracts are made under the powers conferred by Section 46 of the Patents Act, 1949, which has been invoked on three occasions, in respect of drugs to the total value of approximately £750,000. The contracts provide for the supply to hospitals for a period of one year from 1st May, 1964, of the same five drugs as are obtained under existing contracts. Royalties will be paid to the patent holders after negotiation.

Mr. Edelman: Would the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the cost of tetracycline, a very widely used drug, when supplied in its proprietary form, is £45 per 1,000 whereas the cost for imported B.P. standard is between £4 and

£6 10s.? Before the voluntary price agreement is renegotiated will the right hon. Gentleman emphasise to the proprietary drug manufacturers the great disparity among the prices they are charging? Is it not the case that to invoke the Patents Act is to use a very crude means of bringing the drug companies to heel? Would it not be very much fairer if, this matter having been brought to the attention of the drug companies, either they themselves should agree to a voluntary reduction of the exorbitant prices which they are now exacting from the community, or that the Minister should consider taking over the marketing of drugs himself?

Mr. Barber: I think that our arrangements are broadly satisfactory. I would not like to say anything this afternoon which would prejudice the renegotiation of the voluntary price scheme which is taking place with the industry.
I do not think that it would be advisable to go as far as the hon. Gentleman said. I know that the policy of the Opposition is gradually to nationalise the drug industry, but I believe that that would be wrong. After all, one has to bear in mind that the export earnings of the British drug industry are eight times as great as the import bill, and that one-third of the total expenditure on medical research in Britain at the present time is carried out in laboratories of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

Mr. K. Robinson: May I first ask the Minister what is the source of his information that the Opposition policy is gradually to nationalise the pharmaceutical industry? [HON. MEMBERS: "Is it not?"] I am asking the Minister to state his source of information.
May I next ask the Minister two questions arising out of his original reply: First, assuming that he wins his case in the House of Lords, is he prepared to consider invoking Section 46 in respect of any additional drugs beyond the five already imported by him direct? Secondly, he will be aware that the savings affected by this action would be very much greater if they could be extended to the general pharmaceutical service. Has the right hon. Gentleman taken legal advice as to whether the supply of drugs on prescription under the National Health Service could be interpreted legally as a service under the Crown?

Mr. Barber: It is difficult to be sure without notice, but I believe that my predecessor took advice, and I think that the advice that he received was in the negative.
With regard to the hon. Gentleman's second question, about the use of Section 46, I think that one must recognise that this is a serious business, and not one which one should take too lightly.
I recognise the importance of patent protection for the encouragement of research in this country, which I believe is very much in the national interest, but so far as we have not found it necessary to extend this exercise.
The hon. Gentleman asked for my source of information when I said that the policy of the Labour Party was gradually to nationalise the drug industry. I was referring to the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition at the Labour Party Conference in 1961, when he said:
We propose that the Health Service meets its needs increasingly from public enterprise, either through new publicly owned undertakings, or by the acquisition of existing ones.
Nobody could be more specific than that. It may be that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with that policy. If so, I hope that in the general interest he will dissuade his right hon. Friend from proceeding with it.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Electricity Supplies

Mr. W. Hamilton: asked the Minister of Health how many deaths took place in hospitals as a result of recent troubles in the electricity supply industry.

Mr. Barber: I know of none.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole country will welcome that statement—with the possible exception of the proprietors of the Sunday Express? Can he say what progress has been made to ensure that all hospitals have an auxiliary alternative supply of electricity generation since the last scare in this context?

Mr. Barber: The hon Gentleman would have done better to have expressed his gratitude to all those working in the hospital service who went to great trouble to cope with what in his Question he

calls the "recent troubles". In the past year an additional £1 million has been spent on special standby electrical equipment. Nearly 100 generators from central stocks were distributed to hospitals and arrangements were made for some 400 mobile generators to be made available by the Armed Forces.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in view of the Government's attitude to nurses' salaries, the expression of gratitude lies better in our mouths than it does in theirs?

Teaching Hospitals (Patients)

Sir B. Stross: asked the Minister of Health what teaching hospitals make it a condition of admittance and treatment that the patient should if required be subjected to teaching procedures; how many patients have been refused admittance on account of refusing to give such permission; and which hospitals ask the patient to give a signed statement accepting this condition.

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Health how many teaching hospitals make treatment conditional upon the patient being used for teaching purposes.

Mr. Barber: The answer to each part of the Question is none; five hospitals have on a few occasions recommended attendance at another hospital but none refuse treatment that is urgent or not readily obtainable elsewhere.

Sir B. Stross: May we take it that in no circumstances has any patient ever been sent out of hospital for refusing to allow an examination and, secondly, that any suggestion that there is any widespread condition involved or made is unfounded?

Mr. Barber: I have answered the Questions quite specifically and I did so after making considerable inquiries I was told that the number of patients unwilling to take part in teaching is negligible and that some hospitals knew of none and others of only two or three in recent years. Perhaps I might mention that when I entered a teaching hospital for a medical examination, I was surrounded by students who were told by the consultant that they had better pull up their socks if the hospital was to stand any chance of getting the funds it needed.

Mr. Boyden: Would it not be illegal to refuse any patient entrance to a National Health Service hospital, provided always that facilities for treatment were available?

Mr. Barber: My Answer to the two Questions was "None". Frankly, I do not think that I could be more specific than that.

Mr. K. Robinson: In the course of his inquiries, did the right hon. Gentleman make sure that in all cases teaching hospitals asked the permission of patients before using them as teaching material?

Mr. Barber: No, I did not. However, many hospitals, I am told, now explain their teaching activities in leaflets which are handed to patients on admission. I believe that half the undergraduate and one-third of the postgraduate hospitals do this.

Mr. Robinson: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that in all cases the permission of the patient should be sought? If he does agree, will he take steps to see that that is done?

Mr. Barber: I will be happy to see if we should extend the sort of arrangements to which I have referred.

Maternity Beds, London

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Health how many of the additional maternity beds to be provided as a result of projects started this year will be in the Greater London Area.

Mr. Barber: 167.

Mrs. Butler: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that this is an annual Question from me and that the reply is nearly always the same and that in the meantime the situation, at any rate in North Middlesex, is so serious that mothers are now being sent out of hospital 24 hours after the baby is born?

Does he not realise that this battery system of producing babies is most inhuman and is unfair both to the staffs and the mothers concerned? When will he provide enough beds to make it possible for mothers to have a reasonable stay in hospital in proper conditions?

Mr. Barber: No specific increase in the birth-rate in the Metropolitan regions in the next few years is expected, although, of course, the effect of migration cannot be fully assessed. Nevertheless, some 5,000 extra confinements could be provided for by the starts to which I have just referred. The hon. Lady will know that the Cranbrook Report on maternity services advised that 70 per cent. of confinements should take place in hospital. Throughout the Greater London Area we are doing very much better than that. Another figure which will interest the hon. Lady is that 90 per cent. of the mothers of first children are delivered of their children in hospitals n the Greater London area compared with about 85 per cent. elsewhere.

Mrs. Butler: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many of those 5,000 additional confinements are 24-hour confinements?

Mr. Barber: This number is on the basis of the average stay throughout the country.

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF UGANDA (GIFT OF A MACE)

Committee to consider of an humble Address to be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will give directions that there be presented on behalf of this House a Mace to the National Assembly of Uganda, and assuring Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same, Tomorrow.—[Mr. Selwyn Lloyd.]

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND HOOLIGANISM

3.35 p.m.

Mr. Harold Gurden: I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern the continuing increase in juvenile crime and outbreaks of hooliganism among young people: urges Her Majesty's Government to ensure that the courts have adequate means of dealing effectively with young offenders; welcomes the action taken by Her Majesty's Government to promote the study of and research into causes of delinquency; and urges the Government to intensify the measures for its prevention.
What I have to say is directed mainly to the last few words of the Motion. Several hon. Members have made valuable contributions to our efforts to deal with this problem, and I apologise to them for not making use of some of the material which is available in the Library. In particular, I apologise to my hon. Friends the Members for Bath (Sir J. Pitman) and Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell), who are not able to be here, the former because he is in America, and the latter because he is ill.
I do not intend to go fully into the many sordid incidents about which we read almost daily in the newspapers. I use the word hooliganism as implying vandalism, in the context of the recent incidents at Clacton, where, I was glad to learn today, the courts have imposed heavy fines on those concerned. This, at least, will be gratifying to some.
Perhaps I might briefly outline the size of the problem as I see it. Hooliganism and malicious damage to property has increased twelvefold since the 'thirties, and it has doubled during the last five years. Those are only the recorded figures, and they may not, therefore, give the complete picture.
During the last few days many local authorities have been trying to assess the cost to the rates of damage done by hooligans. They estimate that last year the damage done by hooligans amounted to about £500,000. It is thought that the actual figure is about £1 million a year, and to that must be added a considerable proportion of Home Office Votes, and what it costs to repair damage to public transport and to private property.
It is impossible to ascertain the correct figure. Everyone knows that nothing like all the damage is recorded; nor would it be alleged that some incidents due to other causes are charged to vandalism. Therefore, taking a very modest figure, it can be said that the damage costs many millions of pounds a year.
The figure has increased alarmingly. We did not have to spend anything like this amount of money to make good the damage which is now being caused. Further, what concerns most today is the danger to life and limb, not only to humans but to animals, and the entirely unprovoked bloody attacks which take place on young and old, mostly on people who can least manage to defend themselves.
To return to the local authority figure, Mr. Sutcliffe, the secretary of the Local Government Information Office, uses these words at the end of his report:
The cash cost is surely not the only aspect to be considered. The cause of vandalism is a serious social matter and until early education attaches more importance to a child's appreciation of the public services than to his knowing which is the longest river or the highest mountain, there is no hope for tackling the problem at its roots.
That admirably expresses the point I want to emphasise to the House.
Following those comments on vandalism, I turn to juvenile delinquency in general. Home Office statistics show that half the indictable offences are committed by people under the age of 21. One-third of indictable offences are committed by persons under 17. I look at the matter in this way. Taking the Home Office ages, which are often quoted, of 8 to 65—I suppose that this is with the idea that this is the more active part of life—in the first 13 years of that period half of all crime is committed.
People over that age—the next 44 years of that period—commit the other half of crime. This goes to show at least one thing. The experience gained by people as they grow older teaches the vast majority of them that crime does not pay. They become educated. For one reason or another, from one cause or another—perhaps from punishment, in some cases—they learn that it is better not to do it.
There is a Home Office publication entitled Delinquent Generations, which, presumably, most hon. Members have


probably read. It shows that the peak age for crime is immediately upon leaving school. One wonders what the children have been learning at school. Let me admit at once that these figures for juvenile delinquency highlight the low high number of incidents caused by females. Girls are apparently far better behaved than boys. I hope that we shall try to get girls on our side. We should try to get the young girls, who are apparently so much better behaved than the boys, to teach the boys. They might make a better job of it than we do.
In 1960, I was privileged to serve on my party's education committee. We met upstairs on Monday evenings. We were very concerned about this problem, as the Labour Party's education committee must be. A few of us were asked to examine the whole subject, as far as we could with the very limited resources at our disposal. We reported in 1961. During our investigations we interviewed many people. We went to a number of schools. We saw many teachers, local education authority officers, youth clubs, youth club members, magistrates, the police, probation officers, teacher training colleges and their staff. We gained at least some idea of what their opinion was. We gained a general idea of their view of where the responsibility might lie.
This is an excerpt from our report to our colleagues:
The education system can play its part in helping to prevent delinquency, and where parental control is lacking by correct discipline. Teacher Training Colleges: Most concentrate on academic training and methods of teaching.
Until we talked to teacher training college personnel, we did not know that there was a lack of instruction in the problems of delinquency and associated problems.
We said this:
Their curriculum"—
that is, the curriculum of teacher training colleges—
needs to be examined so that student teachers are given guidance to identify possible delinquents they will certainly meet. Religious instruction in State schools seems to be not sufficiently linked with modern training and social behaviour. The school is the best place for ascertaining which children lack parental control and good example and the best means to make good the deficiency.

This was all very brief and perhaps did not carry much weight, simply because we were very limited. I was impressed by the possibilities which lay before us of what could be done at a very young age.
During this investigation we met all the old lists we have all read about so often in connection with the causes of delinquency and crime—boredom, television, and so on. The cinema, drink, drugs, coffee bars, unemployment, too much money, bad homes, bad parents, bad literature, and even the H-bomb, were responsible. These were trotted out by all those we met. One would expect to find some of the people who wished to support their profession, such as teachers, saying, "We want more teachers. We want more and better schools", and the police saying, "We want more police, more police stations and more facilities." That is the sort of argument that is put up generally.
No one denies that all these things are contributory factors and aggravating influences, but in many instances all these things come into play and take effect after a child's mind has been conditioned to delinquency, and because we have failed to inculcate into the child's mind just what we expect of him in our adult society. I suggest that if we do no more than merely accept all that we read in the reports of practically all the committees which have looked into this question we shall merely be repeating the mistakes that we made in the past, and the result is likely to be a further tragic increase in delinquency figures.
Past reports show exactly the same ideas at work. Ten, 20, 30 and 40 years ago people were saying that crime and delinquency arose out of poverty and hunger. It all sounded very reasonable, and I, for one, accepted it. Other contributory causes were later suggested, such as unemployment, the enormous amount of bad films, our penal practice, corporal punishment, and wars.
If we examine the figures which are produced regularly by the Home Office and by the police we can see that these ideas are wrong. The suggestions seemed sensible, and no doubt all these factors have a contributory effect. We are rightly still working on these factors, but we must not delude ourselves into


thinking that they are the prime causes of a child becoming a delinquent or a criminal. The poverty and hunger of the old days has gone. There has never been less juvenile unemployment than there is now, and it is a very long time since we have had so few films and such small cinema audiences. Penal practice has been tremendously changed, most of us believe for the good. Corporal punishment in the prisons has been done away with, officially at least.
While all these developments have taken place, the figures for juvenile delinquency have been increasing regularly every year. The many committees that have been appointed to consider this problem have to some extent been innocently misleading us. I know that their members are people with very high ideals. Some call them "do-gooders". The only disappointing thing about them to my mind, however, is that so many have no experience of dealing with children in their homes. They are childless and unmarried. I do not criticise them for that; they may be very valuable. But that is an unfortunate aspect of the situation.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will be more successful with the Royal Commission that he is setting up. In 1959, his predecessor convened a conference of people in the Church and in public and voluntary services. Its purpose was to combat delinquency and to improve by positive measures the moral health of the nation. At that time many of us thought that we could detect in the setting up of this conference some change at the Home Office. We thought that we were, after all, going back to the very beginning of the problem, and seeing what was being inculcated into the minds of children. But this conference did not seem to have much effect. As far as I can see, the intention was good, but it did not get very far.
I suggest that if we are to solve this problem at all we must start at the very beginning. Even before school age, and certainly at primary school age, it is priority No. 1 to tell a child what society expects of him, and the difference between right and wrong behaviour. As Mr. Sutcliffe said at the end of his report, this is far more important than knowing which is the world's longest river. If we started to teach our children that our laws have

been introduced to protect civilised society we should be on the right track.
We should explain to children of this age that our laws are not new ones, but well-tried ones, based not upon what this age has done but on experience of the past, and that they were set up in what some people call the Christian era. The Commandments, of course, date from the pre-Christian era, but at least they are the basis of our Christian standards of morality, and of our laws. We should explain to children why we have religious training in schools, and what relevance it has to civilised society.
We should also teach these children why discipline is necessary for people of all ages. We should explain why civilised society could not survive without it, and how we should suffer collectively and individually if we did not have it. We might then be able to get children to appreciate just what is expected of them.
I suppose that all this sounds extremely simple in our modern scientific age. If we study the Victorian and Edwardian ages we find that their people seemed to have a much better idea than we do of discipline. Nobody agrees more than I do with the abolition of corporal punishment as a deterrent in prisons, in detention centres and remand homes. But I am not so sure about its abolition in schools and in the home. Whatever else we may say about the Victorians, their discipline was certainly effective. At least, the delinquency figures were better than they are now. We are told that all that is in the past, and that we now have a new morality, with free expression for children, and that we have to study the psychology of the child. I am not so sure. What it comes to is that we should train teachers and parents so that we may achieve what we need to achieve.
Mothers take their children to clinics to safeguard the physical health of the children. But for what reason is the child's health so safeguarded? Is it so that he may go to an approved school or to prison? A great number of children go to those places. While we are affording to train mothers to look after the health of their children we should also think of the other question and try to train mothers in that respect. The mothers themselves may have come


from bad homes. Many of today's parents were delinquent children and we have to recognise that they need training.
I suggest that it would be far better to arrest the difficult cases at school than at Clacton. We all know how distasteful is corporal punishment and we are aware how, in former times, this was applied in schools and in the home, and in penal institutions. But I suggest that it is a dereliction of duty on the part of teachers and parents if sometimes a little corporal punishment is omitted in the school or the home after a child has been taught to understand what is meant by discipline, and knows those things which we expect of him.
I wish to thank my right hon. Friend for attending this debate. I know that he realises the tremendous importance of these questions. Does he think that these are the basic essentials without which we shall fail in our task? To what extent is he calling on those people in the sphere of education—I hope not on Dr. Henderson? What will be covered by the contemplated research which, I think, may prove valuable? It might cover comparisons between schools. It is a proven fact that in the independent schools there is less delinquency and crime.

Mr. Cyril Bence: Not at all.

Miss Alice Bacon: I have listened as long as I could to what the hon. Gentleman has been saying, but this is really going too far. Does not he realise that when children in so-called public schools take to a little stealing, they do not appear before a court? The matter is usually settled in the headmaster's study.

Mr. Gurden: I should not take issue with the hon. Lady on that question. I am saying that the figures for independent schools are better. There may be a sanction regarding these schools, in that the parents may be told to take their children away. I suggest that my right hon. Friend should examine the difference in the figures. If the hon. Lady says that I am wrong—

Miss Bacon: The hon. Gentleman has not got my point. The only recorded figures relate to cases which are dealt

with in the courts. I said that in the majority of cases the same kind of petty pilfering which may go on in a public boarding school would not result in the offenders coming before a court.

Mr. Gurden: I should not like to dispute that. I am saying that I should like my right hon. Friend to go into these things to discover what is the real situation.
I think it fair to ask my right hon. Friend what action is to be taken in the interim, because Royal Commissions take a long time to report and people are getting worried about the situation. Some people consider that this kind of behaviour among young people, with the increase in the figures for juvenile delinquency, is mortal to the soul of the nation. I appeal strongly to local education authorities to give children a chance, and see whether they could look at the teaching of social morality—

Mr. George Thomas: Why does the hon. Gentleman put all the responsibility, or the great part of it, on the schools? Why does not he realise that a good school can never make up adequately for a bad home? Why does not he advocate tackling the problem of home life?

Mr. Gurden: Had the hon. Gentleman listened, he would have heard what I said about parents. I might add that I do not disagree with him at all. I join with him 100 per cent. in praising the teachers for what they have done. I was about to say something with which I know that the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) will agree. I want to encourage teachers who are willing to fight the battle for the moral health of the nation, and, again, I use the words of my hon. Friend's predecessor. I appeal to teachers to enforce discipline, and more particularly to local authority officers to support the teachers who try to do that. They are not always supported when they are trying to enforce discipline.
May I also ask my right hon. Friend what is happening at the Ministry of Education, in view of reports which have been published and committees which have been set up, and the teacher training colleges which have been established. How do people get into these training colleges? It is all right to have A-level


passes for the arts and sciences, but what about some O-level passes for moral behaviour?

Mr. G. Thomas: Shocking.

Mr. Gurden: Cannot we see to it that these teachers have the ability to teach the things that are required in our schools?

Mr. Bence: The hon. Gentleman persists in talking about teachers and the need for schools to deal with this problem of delinquency. Does not he think that the factories and the industrial institutions where boys and girls go after leaving school are the places where they experience the frustration which could lead to delinquency?

Mr. Gurden: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but all such things would have taken place after a child had gone through the primary school where the right sort of instruction should be given. I do not suppose that the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) would disagree that we must start with children when they are young. Surely he will not say that we should leave these matters until the children go into factories.
I appeal to local education authorities. I say to them, "You may be getting the quality which you deserve. If you do not look to the type of curriculum and the type of training of young children, you may need to go on suffering."
To return to the interruptions to my speech. Perhaps I should apologise at this point and comment that it might have been better had I said earlier what I now propose to say. We must be grateful to the teachers and our education system for all that has been done. The police, youth leaders and probation officers deserve much credit. I have always been impressed with the high quality of the people interested in youth. Things would have been much worse had these people in public service not been of such a high calibre.
I cannot close without saying that it is wrong to blame youth as a whole. More than 95 per cent. of our children are not delinquent. Most of them are probably a lot better than most of us were as youngsters. The youth of today is, by

and large, excellent and capable of accepting responsibility.
Hon. Members may be interested in a letter which recently appeared in the Birmingham Post. It was signed by a boy named Andrew Sindle, of Alvechurch. He wrote:
I am sick of my generation taking the blame for the crimes of a minority. We teenagers are unable to do anything about the problem simply because we have no authority to exercise. If some of the rope were given to us, then I am sure that the graph of juvenile crime would be considerably depressed.
He went on to say that he would like to have courts in which juveniles sat as magistrates over the wrongdoers, and concluded:
The heart of the trouble is that the 'liberal-minded' older generation have let discipline fade and have found no substitute. There is no substitute. To be kind you have to be cruel, so give us a crack of the whip to cut out this weak-minded nonsense before it is too late.
Among the many letters, telegrams and telephone calls I have received from people wishing to express opinions on this subject, the House might be interested in this letter:
You are sure of the support of millions of parents all over the country as these young toughs are, in fact, in control. Home Office measures are a laugh. Physical violence needs physical punishment.
That is how strongly some people feel on this issue. That letter was written by an elderly person. I read it so that the House has before it one letter written by a youngster and one written by a more mature person.
It is fair to recall that many people who are now parents were once themselves juvenile delinquents. It is difficult to discuss this matter without becoming somewhat controversial, although I regret if I have provoked controversy between the two sides of the House, for I am sure that all hon. Members are agreed on the subject generally. Perhaps somewhat belatedly—by expressing my thanks to youth leaders and others and by pointing out that the majority of our youth is excellent—I have helped to bring unanimity between hon. Members on this issue.
I appeal to all hon. Members, irrespective of party, and all those in authority, to consider the remarks I have made and the speeches which will be made in this debate to see what can


be done to improve the situation. I can assure my right hon. Friend that the public has had about as much of this delinquency as it can possibly stand.

4.14 p.m.

Sir George Benson: It is possible to take the problem of juvenile delinquency much too seriously. In the Chamber today are 15 to 20 hon. Members and, in one way or another, each one of us has been a juvenile delinquent of a sort. Honesty is something that must be learned. One is not born honest. One is merely born with the capacity for becoming a social individual. Which hon. Member can honestly say that he or she has not committed even the slightest act of violence against a younger brother or sister? The danger of juvenile delinquency must not be exaggerated.
Statistics reveal that the most dangerous age—the peak age for delinquency—is between 11 and 14. During the next three years delinquency is not so pronounced and among 20-year-olds the amount of delinquency is about two-thirds that of the 11 to 14-year-old group. As I say, it is a question of learning to be good citizens. Some juveniles learn quickly while others do not. Some never learn.
We must keep a sense of proportion about all this. I agree that many acts of vandalism are annoying, to say the least. In many cases they are due to the insufficiency of facilities for our youngsters to deploy their energies. It is usually found that where there are sufficient playing fields and adequate facilities for exercise there is not so much delinquency and vandalism. It is no use constantly talking about punishment being the cure for vandalism.
As I say, one is born an anarchist, but with the ability to learn to become a social individual. It takes time and it is clear that as youngsters enter their teens and proceed towards manhood and womanhood the rate of delinquency and vandalism drops. It takes time for juveniles to learn to become good citizens. Only a small proportion become habitual criminals.

4.17 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Seymour: I congratulate my hon.

Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) on bringing this matter to the notice of the House, for it is one of the most serious problems facing the country today. Hon. Members may have heard on the B.B.C.'s one o'clock news that we had an outstanding example in my home town over the week-end of what can happen to youth. The chief constable called two rival gangs together in an effort to settle their differences. In the midst of it all they had a glorious fight among themselves—with the police superintendent there. Bottles and tables were smashed and police reinforcements had to be sent for.
The tone of my hon. Friend's speech was that prevention is better than cure and that we should do more for our youth both before and after they leave school. It is obvious that idle minds and hands must find outlets for their energies. In 1961, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Cleaver), my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak and myself investigated this problem and made a report, although it has not been acted upon. We pointed out that it appeared that the strength of character among young people had not improved with the increase in the standard of living, and that laziness, selfishness and lust were still the root cause of the difficulties.
We recommended better moral training for the young at home, in school and in youth clubs. In the majority of cases the seeds of delinquency are sown in the home, particularly when delinquents lapse into crime. The causes of broken marriages, betting, and drunkenness are obviously well-known, but it is not appreciated that the moral standards maintained by parents have a most vital influence on their children.
We also urged in that report that more trust should be placed in teachers so that they would have no cause to fear summonses for assault after disciplining children. Teachers, we said, can spot potential delinquents at quite an early age and much more can be done to help to prevent crime among young people in the "dangerous" year before they leave school. We have a duty to them.
I am convinced that spending money on and for youth is an investment for the future. So let us help with finance.


Why should the chairman of a branch of the Association of Boys' Clubs in my area have to beg for funds? I read from his letter:
Dear Mr. Seymour,
I write to ask for your help for boys' clubs in this area.… I am anxious to double the number of clubs and this costs money.
He goes on to say:
More boys would respond if there were more boys' dubs and… I emphasise the need for us to continue to help boys to emerge with right attitudes and understanding.
And he hopes that he will have my financial support.
I advocate a considerable increase in the number of youth club leaders. Let us encourage more men and women to undertake this vital work by paying them better salaries and making it an honourable profession. Let us give more financial help to Boy Scouts' and Girl Guides' organisations. In them the best is brought out from boys and girls. Let us have more Air Training Corps. Most boys have a desire to fly and are interested in aircraft. This is an outlet for their extra energies. I want to start a corps in my constituency. I have been trying to do so now for three months, but I have been told that it costs a lot of money. I have all the offices ready and am waiting only for the word "go".
I have said all this about prevention; now what about punishment for these delinquents and hooligans? Young people—boys and girls—today mature early. They get married early. I welcome the report on the position in Scotland, saying that young offenders aged 16 and over should be dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts. I look forward with considerable interest to the report of the newly-appointed Royal Commission. I hope that it will not be so softhearted as we have been in the past.
We have recently had two examples of what might be real value. On a council estate a gang of youngsters frightened old people by shouting outside their homes, tried to start fires with paraffin, swore at passers-by, put bricks and boulders on a road, tore telephone directories, daubed paint on shop windows and smashed milk bottles and bus shelters. When apprehended, their only reply was that they were "fed up", as there was nothing for them to do on the estate.
By contrast, I report something which took place in the juvenile court in my town last week. The chairman said that during his 20 years' experience as a magistrate he could not remember such a large number of offences having been committed by one group. The boys of the gang admitted breaking into houses and other premises, driving away motor vehicles without permission and insurance, or aiding and abetting these offences. A 16-year-old was ordered to pay £11, a 15-year-old was ordered to pay £10, and two of the gang were sent to detention centres.
These are things that we must be concerned about. I sit as a magistrate in Birmingham. The maximum fine a lay magistrate can impose for common assault is £5. It is the same amount for willful damage to property to the extent of £5, plus compensation. This does not worry young people a bit. It is only about half their weekly wage. I should like to see the figure considerably increased.
I heard an hon. Member opposite suggesting that on the lines of "Spare the rod and spoil the child" some of us on this side of the House may have had corporal punishment when we were young. My father believed in that maxim and on a number of occasions I was unable to sit down. I hope that more serious consideration will be given to the reintroduction of corporal punishment for malicious attacks, particularly those on young girls and old people who cannot defend themselves.
I should also like to see extended powers for magistrates so that punishment can be dealt out in the courts to fit the individual offender. I want the Government to consider a system for delinquents, in appropriate cases, to be dealt with at evening centres instead of being sent away from home. I urge that the courts should be given power to sentence offenders to part-time imprisonment with confinement at night and work outside the prison during the day. I should like courts to be able to suspend sentence on young convicted men provided they join Her Majesty's Forces, where they will be trained to be full and proper members of society.
This House has a duty to educate our youth to a happy, respectable and law-abiding life; to see that offenders against the law are fairly, but not unduly,


punished. We have a duty to the public to protect their persons and their property from young hooligans.

4.28 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: The whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) for drawing attention to a matter which is not only of national concern, but one which concerns the whole Western world. Although I do not accept either his diagnosis or his prescription, nevertheless there is one matter on which everyone will agree with him; that is, on the correctness of the facts set forward in the White Paper, The War Against Crime in England and Wales, 1959–1964. All hon. Members, no doubt, will have read that White Paper. I quote from it only one section, which, I think, confirms what has been happening. It says:
…the actual volume of crime has increased substantially.
This is a fact and, of course, the increase in crime usually includes the general rise in delinquency. In the two speeches we have heard from hon. Members opposite, although not in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), it became perfectly clear that there are two approaches to this whole question of the analysis and treatment of crime. On the one side, as was illustrated by the hon. Member for Selly Oak and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Spark-brook (Mr. Seymour), there is the penal, flagellatory approach, while on this side there is what I might call the social approach.
I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Selly Oak, reinforced later by his hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook, speak about the desirability of increasing corporal punishment in the home and in the schools. He is possibly not aware of, or if he is aware it was not in the forefront of his mind, that the number of crimes of violence against children in this country is higher than it has ever been in recorded history. In that social context I certainly would be very wary of entrusting to people the opportunity of giving corporal punishment to people when the whole problem is what to do to reduce the atmosphere of violence in which we live

today. Equally, when the hon. Member for Selly Oak spoke about the desirability of giving a moral examination to teachers before they were accepted it seemed to me that the idea of introducing moral tests of that kind is as pernicious as the older system of introducing the religious tests.

Mr. Gurden: Does the hon. Member not realise that selected teachers in Jewish schools are very valuable in giving training to people, just as are the teachers in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Schools?

Mr. Edelman: The hon. Member is missing the point. I made the point that he was suggesting that moral examination should be applied to teachers before they go to the schools, but who is to decide on the moral qualifications of the teachers who will be accepted? What standard of morality is to be applied in order to assess those teachers? This is wholly pernicious and it takes an extremely narrow view of the concept of morality as such. I hope to return later to the question of morality, because in the whole debate there has been undue emphasis or one section of morality, namely, sexual morality. The wider issues have been ignored.

Mr. Gurden: I never mentioned it.

Mr. Edelman: The hon. Member for Sparkbrook spoke about an incident yesterday when a well-meaning police superintendent, to whom I pay credit for his excellent intention, gathered together two gangs of young men and, presumably, young women. The police took off their helmets and it was hoped that the police and the young people would have a sort of love-feast of reconciliation.
The intention was excellent and the motives which inspired the meeting were ones to which I would pay tribute. But I ought to add that since this celebration—and I can only call it that—took place in front of television cameras and invited journalists it was a demonstration of the wrong way of tackling juvenile delinquency. If, as some of us believe, part of the reason for juvenile delinquency is the aggressive exhibitionism of adolescents, this was a sure way of encouraging it.
This is exactly what happened. As soon as the television cameras appeared


the young men started throwing bottles and chairs and the whole thing ended in a general rumpus. Perhaps in anticipation of the drama to follow there were police with police dogs in action to deal with this juvenile riot.
I shall not speak in detail of the efforts which have been and are being made by so many admirable men and women who either voluntarily or in the prison service devote themselves to dealing with crime and delinquency. Nor do I propose to criticise the penologists, those admirable men and women who are constantly seeking to investigate the origins of crime, but I would like to add a comment on one matter which has not yet been touched upon except by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield which goes to the whole root of the matter.
My hon. Friend said, quite rightly, that the problem of every individual is to make a social adaptation in the course of growing up. The climate of opinion in which young people are growing up today is one in which acquisition is promoted as the ultimate good, in which acquisitiveness is the ultimate virtue, in which in newspapers and on television and in all the media of mass persuasion acquisition is put forward as the most desirable technique of living.
Inevitably, if we have an acquisitive society which promotes the take-over bidder and the tycoon to be the heroes of society, the young imitate those examples, and if they cannot achieve what they want legally they turn to crime. The public has been exercised in recent months by the great train robbery. While I deplore the robbery and I am glad that some at least of the criminals have been found and sentenced, it seems to me that the robbery was a sort of take-over bid by other means.
If we have a society which, through mass media, constantly puts forward people who make great "killings" on the Stock Exchange, on the pools, or by gambling, as examples who are admired and announced in the gossip columns; if this is put forward generally as the type of activity which deserves to be admired and these people are publicised as the epitomes of success, we must

expect to have young people imitating them and to have thereby an increase in the crime rate.
I speak deferentially in the presence of magistrates of great experience, but I believe that, generally speaking, the chief offence of juvenile delinquency is the crime of petty violence, the punch-up, the general offence of hooliganism illustrated by the sort of violent action which, in my boyhood, one would never have heard of. Nowadays, the term commonly used in the Midlands and probably elsewhere is "putting the boot in", which would never have occurred to any boy who had grown up in the usual school atmosphere where, if there was a problem, it would have been solved by fisticuffs. This atmosphere is present not only in society generally, but in the thinking of the youths whom we are now considering.
Without wishing to trot out a whole series of reasons for juvenile delinquency, I believe strongly that with the rise of mass media of communication we have imported into Britain exemplars of behaviour in which the activities of the anarchic cowboy, who is a moral thug in fancy dress on Main Street, is imitated in our High Streets. In postwar years we have seen television, and particularly commercial television, in order to hold audiences and to acquire the highest T.A.M. rating—with the B.B.C. having entered the arena and trailing not far behind—projecting Americanised serials in which violence is put forward and the anarchic person who rejects the rules of society is projected as someone to be admired.
I do not think that the Home Secretary needs to do more than look, first, at the manifestations of television. Let him then take a stroll in a suburban or provincial street and he will see how immediate, and in some cases of delinquency how deadly, has been the impact of the examples put before young people. I know that there is a committee in session on this subject, but it is not enough to set up a committee. We must take action.
I do not want to conclude on a pessimistic note, because I do not feel pessimistic about our young people. I say that not as a generalisation, but for a particular reason. It is that during the course of my own work on the British


Council, and in other connections, I have seen how great movements, like that of the Voluntary Service Overseas, have attracted the enthusiasm and the energies of young people who, after leaving school, want to serve overseas and go to the most difficult places.
Not long ago, I saw a letter from a young man who is working in a school for not only backward but incapable children. He had volunteered to serve in a wild and primitive place. I believe that this impulse of service is one of the great human qualities in which the young generation, whom are are talking about today only because we have statistics of delinquency, is only seeking the opportunity to serve.
I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he might apply himself to considering in what areas these great energies might be applied, and what opportunities of service, not only abroad but also at home, might be created. I would urge him most particularly, if I may offer this as a constructive suggestion, to consider with his colleagues whether it might not be possible to set up in Britain, as a counterpart to Voluntary Service Overseas, a collective system which will give young people who want to do voluntary service in all sorts of different fields and all kinds of social service an opportunity to apply their energies and to show that the youth of Britain is not represented only by delinquents but by decent, devoted and determined people whose only object is to serve.

4.42 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: Before I put forward a few proposals which, I hope, may attain some of the limited objectives that we seek, I must, I hope gracefully, criticise the speech of the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman).
The hon. Member, for whom I have high regard in other fields, and certainly when he is dealing with the arts, the British Council, or with matters of social service, about which I know he has considerable knowledge, manifested a complete lack of knowledge of what I might call criminological research work or the effects of delinquency.
It is clear that the hon. Member has never had, as I have had, knowledge of

the handling of delinquents, otherwise he would not have expressed those views. His was an empty speech, because it made no constructive and immediate suggestions as to what we can do to deal with this very serious increase in crime. It was also wrong for another reason. He was "not with it", if I may use that phrase, in throwing out the charge that we on this side of the House are flagellatory in our approach and hon. Members opposite are social in theirs. That is better than the Liberal Party, admittedly, which is not even present for the debate at all.
What is really called the social approach could be defined in this way—do-gooders and do-nothing. The nation is sick to death of that approach. It wants us to tell them what we propose to do to stop this very marked increase in crime. That is what I propose to try to do this afternoon.
First, I am immensely indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) for having brought this subject to our attention today and given us an opportunity for a brief debate. We also ought to pay a tribute to the tremendous efforts made in recent years by the Home Office over the whole sociological field. In legislation, it has dealt with almost everything, and it has been a heavy programme which many of us have had to suffer over the years.
It has varied from an Act, which is of great value to both sides of the House and to the country, the Children and Young Persons Act, to the Street Offences Act, the whole of licensing, and betting and gaming; and the Streatfeild Committee has been set up to deal with matters of penal reform. A wide rangy of other Measures to bring the criminal law up to date are still being worked on hard and fast.
A most valuable White Paper entitled War against Crime has been put before the House, which has had the honesty and fearlessness to state the facts to the people in Blain language. The most startling fact is that there are more crimes of breaking and entering today by people under 21 than there were five years ago; that is to say there has been in five years an increase of very


nearly half as much again, and two-thirds of all breaking and entering is by those under 21.
My qualifications on this subject are practical. I have had to handle and deal with a very large number of the young criminals and see them personally. During the course of this experience, I have inquired of them what are the causes and the reasons why many of them have perpetrated this class of crime.
I have also had to consider from the point of view of my constituency many acts of wanton vandalism that have been suffered by many of us, including myself, in my own home, from time to time—acts of vandalism against works of art, which we saw only the other day in a foreign country; and it is true to say that other nations are suffering from the same difficulties that we are suffering from in this country.
What are we to do? First, the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) stumbled across something accidentally when she rose to interject. It was pointed out, quite accurately, that there is infinitely less crime among boys in the public schools of Britain than there is among boys of an equivalent age who do not go to independent schools. There is a very good reason for it. I went to some of the rougher schools around London, in Shoreditch, Paddington and, indeed, in Chelsea, which is one of the worst, to find out what was the difficulty.
The real difficulty is that in a public school, if a boy is guilty of violence against the person, of breaking or entering, or of stealing, he comes up, inevitably, before the headmaster, and he will get sacked. He leaves that school with a smirch on his name which will last for the rest of his life. This is one of the most serious deterrents, because it not only hits the boy, but, happily, hits the parents, too.
What I suggest—I failed completely with the L.C.C. and I have waited for an opportunity to put it before this House—is that the most important thing that we can do is to give the power in the secondary schools, grammar schools and all our schools to sack a child entirely from that school for delinquency. I will

tell the House how I would deal with those who are sacked.
What is the difficulty? In a Shore-ditch school, for example, on the blackboard was written "Up with Hitler", and all the rest of the Fascist stuff, and the master's car was overturned and set on fire. What happens? The teacher has no power to deal with the child. He cannot cane him—and I would wholeheartedly agree that the cane would not be of the slightest use in such a case. So what can be done? One cannot keep the child in at night, because there are not sufficient teachers to give it the jolly good physical training that it really wants. One cannot sack the child. One cannot send for the parents and say, "You pay for the damage". The only thing to be done is to get rid of those children from that school immediately.
At a school in Paddington, for example, a friend of mine who was a master there had two boys in the school of 14½ years of age, both of whom had been convicted of breaking and entering. When they came back and the next term began, there were six such boys and by the end of the year there were 16 out of 23 who had been guilty of this type of offence. It spreads like a disease. If we want to stop it, we have to be able to get rid of those children from the school, and quickly.
What are you going to do? Are you going to say that they shall not go to school at all? No. There is only one answer to this and that is that you must have special schools for that class of child who is so sacked.

Miss Bacon: rose—

Mr. Rees-Davies: It is no good grimacing like that. The nation wants something done and you have not got any decent proposals.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Order. It would be better if the hon. Member remembered that he is addressing the Chair.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Miss Bacon: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman has said. He said that when he was at school, children were sacked. That was presumably


from Eton. Can he give me an example of any boy who was expelled from Eton and sent to a special school?

Mr. Rees-Davies: I can give many examples of boys who were expelled from public schools and who afterwards were sent to special schools. In most cases they were sacked and they went to other schools. I would rather not give the names of those other schools to which they went, because it would not be a good thing for those schools. They went to other schools because the parents could afford to pay to send them elsewhere.

Mr. G. Thomas: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he would like to be a teacher at one of those schools for criminals that he has suggested?

Mr. Rees-Davies: If the hon. Gentleman wants to know, yes. If I had the time, I cannot think of any class of work more rewarding. It is directly the same class of work as is being done and ought to be done in approved schools and borstals today.
This happens to be the next feature that I was coming to, and it is the most rewarding class of work that one can have. At least, I had this advantage, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman did not have, that when I was serving during the war and men got into trouble, they were usually put into my platoon afterwards in order to cure them of the ill effects. So I have had certain experience of this problem.
However, I do not want to lose my train of thought. This is the first time that this approach has been publicly stated, and I believe it to be intensely practical and one which the nation will support. A letter was written to my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak by a young boy. He made one very good point in that letter. He said that that boys themselves can do a lot to arrest delinquency. I am a great believer in what is generally called the prefect system. Another reason why the public schools do not have very much crime is that the main burden of discipline falls upon the prefects. As one who had to administer the cane, and who frequently had to deal with discipline, I can say that it was very much easier to do it oneself with one's authority, being a reasonably good sportsman and so on.

The boys would take their punishment much more readily than they would from a master.
I urge that in our schools, and particularly in the bigger schools such as the comprehensive schools, we should institute the prefect system, choosing boys who are respected in the school. The boy need not necessarily be the brainiest boy in the school, but he should be well respected. He should be given the responsibility of maintaining a certain amount of discipline, talking to the other boys and setting a decent example. This is an approach which could be extended very greatly throughout our schools.
I am bringing forward these points in this order, not because I believe that education is the only aspect but because it is the first in point of time. In many of the cases that I have had to deal with, most of those who have been sent to borstal and to approved schools have told me that they began crime at the age of 12 to 14 years. Therefore, we have to consider this problem first of all in connection with boys of 11 to 12 years of age. I should like the Home Office to gain a little more power over the Ministry of Education. I know that they are liaising closely, but the more influence the Home Office can have on the educative process at an early age to ensure the eradication of crime from schools at an early age the better.
Because I can advocate very little of a practical nature in connection with parents, I say nothing on the subject. Of course, we all agree that the parents are largely to blame for the whole problem, but I cannot think of any method of dealing with them other than possibly that parents should be made vicariously liable for the damage occasioned by their children. I think that suggestion is worth looking at. It can be done with school books and matters of that sort to a limited extent. When damage is done by school children, the parents ought to be held financially responsible, and I believe there are some schools where this is carried out to a limited extent.
I believe chat we might approach this problem rather more widely, and I invite the Home Secretary to consider whether it is a practical proposition—and I do not assert that it is—by which we might introduce some miscellaneous provision


to hold parents vicariously responsible for the damage created by their children. I shall leave the question of the rôle of the police until last. What we want to see is the young person who causes damage repaying the fruits of the crime completely.
I urge that all magistrates should fix the quantum of the damage and impose a fine of that degree, by an indictable charge if necessary. It may be said, "This may amount to £100 or £150." So it may, but there is no harm in making a youngster pay that amount of money over a period of two or three years, especially in these days. I can think of no greater deterrent. I have been told over and over again, "If you hit them in the pocket you hit them harder than if you hit them on the backside." It is being hit in the pocket which really hurts them. Today, they earn anything from £10 to £15 a week. They should be made to repay, say, at the rate of £3 a week until they have paid £75 or £80, whatever the amount of the damage, and this would reduce vandalism in this country by half.
What is the other punishment which should go with it? It must be a deterrent. We need the new remand homes and detention centers—I would rather they were called detention schools—which are to be provided. It is intended that all those under 21 who formerly would have received sentences of imprisonment shall go to these detention schools, as I hope they will be called. I believe there ought to be two classes of detention school. There should be one to which a boy is sent for a short period of very sharp training. In the main, I would have thought that this would be not longer than 16 to 20 weeks. There should also be the alternative kind of detention school which would have only evening classes. I accept what my hon. Friend has said. I think that some of these young vandals who create a certain amount of damage can be kept out of trouble by being made to report to a detention school for evening classes only, for a given period of time.
The purpose that one wants to achieve is to get some proper physical training into these offenders. It is no use the hon. Member for Coventry, North talk-

ing about opportunity for recreation. Good gracious me, in my constituency there is every conceivable opportunity for recreation of every kind. It is not a question of opportunity. It is a question of providing hard and severe physical training until the person gets into the world. The most successful way to deal with delinquents that I have ever known is the method that I experienced when I was in the Guards Depot at Caterham. I can think of nothing to beat a good drill sergeant in the Brigade of Guards for rapidly teaching a young man some manners and proper behaviour. I really believe this to be true. Many of these people are retiring and leaving the Army, and there are some whom it would be well worth while getting out of the Army so that they could be put in charge of centres where first-class physical training could be given. To use an old tag—
Mens sana in corpore sano"—
"A healthy mind in a healthy body". One gets the body healthy first, and then one trains it hard and rigorously. It is not a question of whipping or flagellation. It is a question of teaching these young men some manners and discipline. We do not want to keep them there at public expense for two years, as in borstals. We want to get them into the place for 16 weeks and give them real, hard training. Of course, if we fail, we fail. W cannot succeed in every case, but in many we would. At the same time that they are receiving physical training they should be given training for a job. We should see that we have on the staff at detention centres one good personnel officer responsible for placing the boys into good and interesting jobs when they leave.
Many of these vandals are very good boys. I have met lots of them. There is a great deal of good in them and if one talks to them straight, and says to them, "If you had an interesting job, and knew that you were a good athlete, you would not be up to that trouble, would you?", they will say "No". The fact is that they have no general interest and a lot of exuberance, but no hobby and no real interests. If they became, for instance, good carpenters, and used their hands skilfully, or good rugby players, or cricketers, that would be a great help.
I remember years ago that I used to go to the East End to teach boys how to bowl fast. I know that I was a bad bowler, bowling fast bad long hops, and they bowled them, but at the end of the day we all went away after a very good evening having enjoyed a very good hobby together. These missions, schools and clubs are only good for the boys who are drawn into them if those who are running them know what they are doing. What is the good of going to clubs where the boys only lay about and have a little fun? That is no good.
I would urge that we should look at the detention centre, which provides sharp, rigorous physical and mental training for a short period, and see whether, by the eradication of the bad boys from the schools who are sacked and who are sent on to these special schools where they can be developed, we can deal with the problem. Most of those who commit criminal offences in these schools come from the lower grades in the class. They are the more backward children, and, therefore, these schools would be the answer for them.
I have dealt with training and punishment centres, and I now want to say a few words about the rôle of the police in modern society.

Mr. Edelman: I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest. The only thing that I am not clear about is who is to decide and what right of appeal there would be if a boy is expelled from a school and stigmatised by being sent to a detention centre, which I think the hon. Gentleman put forward rather lightly.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I think that consideration will have to be given to those questions, though I will answer merely with an interrogatory. What right, in fact, has any boy who is sacked from a public school today? The answer is "None." It may well be that it is right, but I would certainly debate that. The details of matters of this kind will obviously require to be carefully worked out. I only want to deal with the general principle.
The police at last are beginning to get ahead. We have not the success in the modern age which we ought to have achieved. We have increased the pay of the police, which is admirable; we

have another 10,000 police, which is also admirable, but the force is not modernised. Much is being done by the Home Secretary to catch up leeway, and now with new methods which we have brought in under the new Act regional crime squads are being brought in, and there is a new section dealing with research and pay, which is about time.
There is one aspect, however, in which we are particularly backward. I refer to the scientific aspect. If we want to stop crime, then, of course, we want to detect it. We have been dealing with prevention and are now turning to detection. If we want to secure detection, then scientific means are vital. We are well behind the Americans in this field. How should this be done? The whole question of real science is not easy for an ordinary regular, modern police officer. He has not been trained for it. I make this recommendation most strongly, that the question of scientific research, particularly the question of all matters which normally fall to Scotland Yard, should go under a university, Cambridge University for preference, because of its approach.
We have recently had set up, through the magnificent gesture of Sir Isaac Woolfson, the Woolfson Foundation, under Professor Radzinowicz, dealing with research. We should have universities with laboratories in which the whole scientific approach to crime detection could be pursued, including the actual exhibits in the criminal cases of today. I believe that in addition to those laboratories there should be two others only, one at Scotland Yard and the other in the north of England. At present, the police have far too many. They are ill-equipped for the purpose, and they have insufficient personnel. It is difficult to get highly qualified scientific personnel.
Once it comes under the universities and they feel that they are working in the professional field I do not think that it will be at all difficult to get the people needed. Meanwhile, if we want to catch the criminal today we must make use not only the scientific officers which they have in Scotland Yard and elsewhere, but we must use professional men from outside. The difficulty is that in almost all crimes much of the success or failure in securing a conviction


depends perhaps on one small piece of fibre. Is it a nylon or a wool fibre? If so, what root does it come from? That requires consideration by experts who are highly skilled in every field of science. I urge that we should look very carefully at doing this through the universities and then set up not only that research, but train those who will become the Bernard Spilsburys of tomorrow.
I hope that what I have said will have given some food for thought, even on the Opposition benches. I believe that it will have done and will have been of some assistance to those at the Home Office whose great work, and that of the Home Secretary recently, is now beginning to be seen. But if we are to succeed in the eyes of the public, then my party certainly must do something about it. We must not have the shilly-shallying attitude of hon. Gentlemen opposite.
First, we must immediately get rid of our bad children so that they cannot infect the good. Secondly, we must see that those who cause trouble repay the fruits of their crime. Thirdly, we must see that they are trained to be fit, with a healthy mind in a healthy body, so that they can better take their appropriate place in modern society.

5.9 p.m.

Mr. Julian Snow: I am sorry that the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) referred to the shilly-shallying attitude of my hon. Friends, because the Labour Party has been struggling with the matter for years. The problem with which we are confronted is the direct result of the age-old attitude of people who support the party opposite.
I am sorry, too, that at the beginning of his speech the hon. Gentleman dished out a nasty sneer at people whom he termed "do-gooders". There are hundreds of thousands of people who do voluntary service in the towns, countryside and great conurbations, who run boys' clubs and who encourage all sorts of social activities. I am very sorry that that sort of sneer should be levelled at them when they are doing such constructive work. This idea about "do-gooders" is, of course, the sort of remark that one finds in the popular Press,

which always bolsters up even the problem which we are discussing today, in order to create news.
Certainly, in the first two speeches this afternoon there was, I thought, a significant under-emphasis on parental responsibility, although the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet did refer to it. I am fully in favour of the penalty being laid on the shoulders of the parents. I think that if the head of the family had to take financial responsibility for misdemeanours, not only for juveniles but also for adolescents, it would have a good effect.
But in none of the speeches made so far has this significant point been made. Why is it assumed that the problem is peculiar to this country? It is not. I do not know how many hon. Members saw, about 2½ years ago, a televised film about adolescents in Sweden, in which the Swedish actress Mai Zetterling took part. In that remarkable film, Miss Zetterling made clear exactly the social attitudes and behaviour of Swedish youth today. If the evidence produced in the film was accurate, and I have no reason to suppose that it was not, British youth has nothing on Swedish youth. Moreover, the problem is to be found in other countries, too. I believe that it is serious in Japan, and I have read that it exists in Russia as well.
It might be useful to find out whether this is a global problem. Reference was made to it in that sense in the White Paper referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman). What is the global problem, and what is its origin? One can pick out one or two possible reasons. I do not myself underestimate the bad effect of certain forms of literature which have been coming to this country from the United States ever since the end of the war. I do not underestimate the influence of certain American films.
However, these twin products of American life are not, in my view, typical of America at all. They are possibly typical of a demand which has been fed by private enterprise in the United States, catering for perverted tastes and largely coming from urban life in that great country, but they do not at all represent the moral and


law-abiding people of the—speaking geographically—great areas of America. There is no doubt that certain forms of literature coming to us has a bad effect. I am referring not particularly to pornography, but to literature which describes what my hon. Friend spoke of as the acquisitive form of attitude to life. Admittedly, this has been an example of a very bad influence in our lives.
There may well be other reasons. As a result of the general increase in world wealth, certainly in Western countries and, probably, I think, in Russia, too, there is a tendency towards overcrowding and a tendency, certainly in this country, for vast new estates to be developed without the necessary amenities to provide a full social life. Time is left on the hands of children and adolescents, and there are not enough co-ordinating influences to prevent people from getting into mischief.
However, looking at the matter as a whole, I have no doubt that it is parental influence which matters. If parental influence is bad, it produces this problem. If it is good, it can prevent the sort of moral danger into which we appear to be running.
In the delicate way which we expect from him, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) made a significant remark. He referred to the particular age group within which juvenile crime seems to be highlighted. In blunter words, of course, this is a reference to the physiological situation with which young people in the early stages of their lives are confronted. It is at this point, of course, that the majority of children are leaving, or are about to leave, school. This is the danger moment.
When the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet said that in his constituency there were immense possibilities for recreation and letting off steam, I interjected to say that that situation was not typical. I do not think that it is typical. In the areas of great urban sprawl, to say nothing of our densely populated towns, there are hopelessly inadequate facilities for recreation and letting off steam, and so we get the little gangs at the corners and mischief being made because there are not the sort of facilities which the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet and I—there is no need to be mealy-mouthed about it—enjoyed when we were schoolboys.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) will forgive me if I say that I am sorry that she brought in the public school issue.

Miss Bacon: It was an hon. Member opposite who did it.

Mr. Snow: Yes, but my hon. Friend questioned with hon. Members opposite the position of public schools. In my view, most public schools give academically a very good example.
Where I disagree with hon. Members opposite is in their theory that less crime originates from public schools than from other forms of school. I do not believe this to be true. The trouble is that crime originating from the public schools tends to be covered up. A few minutes ago the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet, in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North, asked rhetorically what protection there was for a boy sent down from a public school. Ultimately, of course, by and large, the protection is that the parents of boys or girls at public schools are richer and, therefore, can help their children when they go wrong. This, surely, is obvious.
One hon. Member opposite referred to the curious fact that the incidence of crime and delinquency among females was rather mild. If one reads the reports about the disorders and rows which go on, one sees one theme occurring throughout almost all of them, that the girls egg the boys on. This is a process of nature. It is nothing to be surprised at. Of course they egg them on. This is something we must accept as a fact and as part of the problem, and not let statistics lie more than usual. In fact, the problem is just as serious among girls as it is among boys.
I hope that the House will pay a good deal more attention to the position of parents. More often than not, it is trouble in the home or inadequate supervision or an inadequate lead by parents which results in trouble among adolescents.

5.17 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Fell: I hope that the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) will forgive me if I do not follow him in all his interesting argument, though there is one matter


which I wish to take up with him. When one or two of my hon. Friends referred to the public schools, I thought that they were referring to all independent schools of one kind and another. I am certain that, if one took in religious schools under the same heading, one would find a considerable distinction between religious schools and non-religious schools. It might be very interesting to have the figures, if such exist, of delinquency in religious schools as opposed to others.

Mr. G. Thomas: The hon. Member might have a shock.

Mr. Fell: I hope that I would not, and I do not believe that I would.
There have been references already to the question of the origins of juvenile delinquency. In my view, the origins come from all sorts of things in our modern age, from our modern hopelessness in some ways, from our lack of control as a result of disintegrating faiths, but they come also, I am sure, from the fact that no child of under 26 has lived under anything but a sort of sword of Damocles. No child of under 26 has lived a life in which he or she has not known, either consciously or unconsciously, that the whole world could be extinguished tomorrow by nuclear bombs.
I believe that this fact, taken in conjunction with the growing godlessness of the world and the growth of individual freedom in every context, makes the problem of the control and upbringing of youngsters extremely complex. What have they to lose in enjoying themselves while they still have time to live?
One of the greatest problems with which the world is faced is the lack of respect for law and order, which is spreading throughout the world. I have spoken many times on this matter in the House. This is aggravated by the fear of early extinction, latent or present, on the part of many millions of people. If these people have no religious faith to hang on to, what is left for them? One can hardly be surprised that people who have no faith, little property and little upbringing are inclined to have a lack of respect for man-made law and order.
The picture gets worse as one looks at it more deeply. We live in a world in which great people set the worst conceivable example. I shall always be proud to have been a member of this great and distinguished House of Commons. But even this House, the greatest Parliamentary institution in the world, has not set—I do not want to exaggerate this—in every respect the sort of example to the people of Britain which might have been set over recent years.
This goes for both sides of the House. I do not suppose that there is a single hon. Member who can stand up and say, "I have set the sort of example that I should have set on every count". If asked, I doubt whether I could say that I set a good example when I called a former Prime Minister a national disaster. I have no doubt that I should have moderated my language.
The example set to large numbers of young people by certain very distinguished men in religious and other callings, in inciting them to break the law, has been appalling. Lest any of us should get sententious about this, I am sure that we should all examine our consciences about it. But I do not recall the occasions on which Bertrand Russell and Norman Collins, to take just two instances—[HON. MEMBERS: "Norman Collins?"] Not Norman Collins—Canon Collins. [Laughter.] I should not for a moment laugh at Norman Collins.
When they were leading young people on various marches, I do not recall them making it perfectly clear that they would leave the movement at once if any of the youngsters broke the law. They knew perfectly well what they were leading thousands of young people to do. They knew that they were leading and inciting them to break the law. However good the purpose in their minds may have been, it was wrong, and could not have been more wrong, than to lead, at this time of uncertainty in people's minds, thousands of young people to have an even greater contempt of the law than many of them already had.
It is a shocking thing that many leaders of opinion, people in high places, have given so bad an example to the


young people and have then wondered why juvenile delinquency had reached the heights that it had. I have a vested interest in hoping that the Home Office, with the encouragement of the suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies), will be able to deal with this, because in Great Yarmouth, in my constituency, we have a town which, I hope, will never suffer the ravages which Clacton suffered. I hope that people in leading positions will take this matter seriously, for we owe to the youngsters nothing if we do not owe them a good example.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas: This debate has been characterised by deep sincerity on both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) always impresses me by his sincerity and by the courage with which he proclaims his views. I pay him that tribute, because I propose to go on to disagree profoundly with some of his observations.
I believe that no one in the House or in the country can put his finger on the cause of juvenile delinquency. The person who could tell this House the basic cause for so many young people spoiling their lives early on would be a modern Solomon. I want to pay my tribute, as a schoolmaster, to British youth today. More than matching our juvenile delinquents are the Duke of Edinburgh award winners and the young people in youth clubs who give voluntary service and their time to care for old folk and find that their character is strengthened in the process.
I believe that we have never had a better generation of young people than we have now. Unfortunately, the bad are following excesses which are bound to command the attention of the Press and organs of publicity and which are bound to disturb us all. I have paid my tribute to the quality of young people today, but I do not want to underestimate the grievous social problem which delinquency presents. A strange feature of it is that it presents itself in village communities as well as in our large cities. It has spread to the most remote corners of our land; and obviously there must be a cause.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden), who introduced the Motion—and I join those who have thanked him for so doing—spent a lot of time in dealing with the responsibility of the teacher and with the part that the schools can play in combating delinquency in modern society. I do not believe that the schools can do more than they are doing. The quality of young people entering teacher training colleges today is as good as ever it was. Only idealists will join the teaching profession in a generation which is as money-minded as this one.
If the schools cannot do more than they are doing, and if we cannot get inside the homes to ensure that parents are good parents, what can we do? The hon. Member for Selly Oak wanted parents to be trained. That was a tall one. Who is to train them and where are they to be taught? The hon. Member seemed to believe that those with larger families were better able to look after their youngsters than those with small families, working on the principle that if they did not have any family at all, they could not do anything for young people. We need to remind ourselves that the atmosphere of our times plays upon the weaknesses of adolescents and that only those who are in good homes—and the great majority of our young people are—have the right values taught them at home.
My natural inclination is to agree with the hon. Member for Yarmouth that if we had more religious instruction, somehow it would protect our young people. I believe that the Christian religion—which stands for more than high standards of morality—is a tremendous help in the life of individuals. Unfortunately, however, religious instruction alone is no guarantee of good morality.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said on an earlier occasion, although not here in public, this is the first generation when we have had compulsory religious instruction in our schools. The figures from church schools are, I know, no better than those from the other schools, unless there has been a change in the last fortnight, which I doubt. The hon. Member for Yarmouth must not press me, because I know this. We had better leave that alone.
Let us look at the sort of society that we are creating. The hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies), with his great knowledge of the law, spent a lot of time dealing with punishment fitting the crime and also helping to recreate the individual. I listened to him with great interest. I believe, however, that we in this House must accept a great deal of responsibility for the climate of our times.
It was in this Parliament that, under the leadership of the Government Front Bench, we opened the door to the greatest gambling craze in modern history. There is no one in the House who is not aware that young people are being undermined by the gambling craze in Britain. It was the present Foreign Secretary who, when Home Secretary, told the House that he trusted the British public, that we were a mature people and that I was wrong in opposing the freedom to gamble. I believe that the Betting and Gaming Act and the greater opportunities for drinking afforded by the Licensing Act have been factors in undermining the weakest of our youth—obviously, I do not say all of them; the figures would be against me. Those who are weak, however, have had opportunities for their weakness to be exploited.
Therefore, the Government, who took the lead—supported, I know, by many hon. Members on this side of the House—in both those Measures cannot get away from responsibility for having created the climate of "Look after yourself and let the Devil take the hindmost" and "I am all right, Jack. Pull up the ladder."
My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) said that this was a world problem. It is hard to deny what he said, but the problem takes a different form in different countries. If delinquency reveals itself in excesses all over the world, we must ask ourselves what there is in common to disturb the youth of the world.
The hon. Member for Yarmouth put his finger on it. There is insecurity among the weaker youth in all lands. They are being taught that might is right, and then we expect them not to follow it in their private lives. When

they are taught by people who should know better that to be strong enough to insist upon having their own way counts in governmental circles, we should not be surprised that young people who do not have much of a background at home accept that philosophy for themselves. One of the tragedies of the nuclear world in which we live is that it has undermined youngsters who do not have the love and protection of a good home to balance fears which otherwise have been created.
I do not know what the Home Secretary will tell us when he replies, but I hope that he will accept the idea that far more research into the causes of juvenile delinquency is needed. I believe that we are better advised to put our emphasis on finding out the causes of delinquency than on questions of punishment. Punishment there must be. Let me not excuse the young thug who should be made to feel hurt; that is as far as I go. I know that when a young thug spoils the life of a young girl or ill-treats an old person who is quite incapable of defending himself, society has a right to be protected from these young people.
I believe, however, that this House has a responsibility, first, to find out why we are creating that sort of young people in our midst. Then we shall be better able to deal with the problem.

5.37 p.m.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger: During the course of my one or two observations, I shall refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) and also to the interesting and thoughtful speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow). This is a debate in which we are all extremely prone to indulge in generalisations and abstractions which are a peculiarly unattractive indulgence, but I should like first to make two particularisations. The first is to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) for raising the subject at this time and for having done so in such a thoughtful and sincere way. The second is to thank my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for being present.
The House should give my right hon. Friend a little praise and encouragement. He is, at the moment, the whipping boy of the intellectual Left. His back is broad enough to bear all this, but it would not be a bad thing if occasionally tribute were paid to his humanity and to the insight which he brings to bear upon the peculiar, painful human problems which are always brought to his Department and, in particular, to the thought which he has so manifestly given always to these penal problems, in which I happen to be particularly interested.
We are discussing this matter in the context of events which took place not long ago at Clacton, when these young people made an abominable nuisance of themselves and everybody rightly took grave exception. We should, therefore, ask, first, what we will do about those who are now at risk of being delinquent round about that age. All that we can do about them is negative and defensive. I do not think that it should not be done for that reason, but I do not think it is really with them that we can hope to have our greatest success. I think we have to have regard, as far as they are concerned, to the operation of the present penal system and the deterrents and the encouragement to improve their lives which that offers.
If I may say so with great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies), who, I thought, made a most interesting and constructive speech, I could not help thinking as I listened to him that my right hon. Friend may well be reflecting, if we examine what my hon. Friend was saying in the light of the actual structure of the penal system and children's service at the moment, that there is very little of what my hon. Friend was saying which does not have its place in the present organisation and administration.

Mr. Rees-Davies: Administration, yes.

Mr. Iremonger: And the whole basic conception of the penal system.
But apart from the penal system, I think that when we look at those juveniles who are at risk the great solvent and cure is time, because the maximum incidence of juvenile delinquency comes round about these years and these young people are soon going to be

subject to the greatest possible cure for irresponsible behaviour, which is marriage. The women will soon put them right.—[Interruption.] I do not agree with my hon. Friend who, I think it is, says they will egg them on.
These people will soon be married, for the age of marriage, fortunately, is becoming younger and younger, and I think that marriage and the responsibility of marriage will steady a great many of them up. I shall make an observation later on the relevance of this in connection with delinquency. It has already been observed that women are very much less delinquent than men. I do not think that they need take particular credit for that. I think it is part of their whole social situation.
Secondly, those who are at present at risk will be sobered up by responsibility and by achievement, and to the extent that they are less responsible and have less achievement in society they will become increasingly chronic delinquents—of whom, in fact, there are very few, but of whom there will always be some.
The hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth referred to the major fact which I think we ought to have in mind when considering this whole problem in this country, which is that the enormous volume of juvenile delinquency in this country is not a phenomenon unique to us. It is something which extends to many other parts of the world, and it is worth asking where in particular it is to be found.
I think—and this is subject to confirmation—that it is found in the rich and expanding industrial countries, mainly of the Western world. It makes one wonder whether perhaps this phenomenon of delinquency in this particular kind of society does not give us a clue to the reason for it. May it be that it is, perhaps, something universal in a particular kind of society, in a society which has a high level of new prosperity and in a society which is peculiarly subject to the stress of change? That is what it seems to me to be.
I believe that if one follows through the common factors and then sees what conclusions we can draw, it comes to this, that those who are delinquent are those who are most likely to break down under stress, and that the stress is a stress which comes whenever we impose upon people


a new and alien culture. In the change of an expanding society with a new and unaccustomed prosperity, we are putting on people a kind of stress which we put on them when we impose on them an entirely alien kind of culture. Then they lack the great governor and stabiliser in life, and that is a sense of purpose, a sense of familiarity, a sense of belonging, a sense of identification with the rhythm and tenor of the life which goes on around us.
I am fortified in this thought by the fact that if we look at those countries which are most different from the rich, new, expanding industrial nations of the world, they are the poorer rural, agricultural societies in which there is a strong, ancient, traditional culture and way of life, very often fortified by religion which commands the adherence and allegiance of the people—rural Italy, rural Spain, for example.
I lived for years among people who were the most desperately poor, in material resources, we could possibly have in the world, people whose life, if one condemned to it the delinquent youths who sacked Clacton, would be a life of intolerable exile and deprivation, and yet it was a society in which the values and rhythms of life were accepted and understood, and in which delinquency was something which was simply not there at all. The only crime, which was made a crime by the British administration, was adultery—and the prisons were, I admit, full; but adultery was not a crime in the concept of the native society as it was of this society from which the administrators came.
It may be a crime, but that is another question. This was a society which was confident and happy in itself, which knew what it was doing and what the purpose of life was, which was, very largely, to keep body and soul together by ancient and difficult and highly skilled crafts, of living and of getting sustenance from the sea, and maintaining their rather flimsy fabric from destruction by the elements. That is what is lacking in the kind of society we have, where criminal youth is most in evidence today. The Dutch have a saying that there is no such thing as a happy criminal, and I think that that is a very profound and wise observation, if one

believes that happiness consists in a sense of purpose, of endeavour, of belonging and of being of importance to others.
Various observations have been made about the rôle of the home and education. I think that the rôle of parents of delinquent children, if one may make such a hideous generalisation, is particularly difficult because they are handicapped, so often, in this way; these are parents who were brought up themselves by parents who were richer than they were, who were stronger than they were, and who were able to exert discipline and maintain their superiority in the ordinary business of life, whereas the young delinquents giving trouble today are living in homes in which their parents are often—in the sense of having a spending, disposable income—poorer than they are. These are the standards, no matter whose fault it may be, of an acquisitive society, and the parents, quite often, and the teachers, are poorer than the child or the pupil is, and they are put into a difficult psychological situation in their trying to maintain standards of conduct.
This is something which this House cannot do anything about, but if one comes to the schools I think that it is of value to the House to recognise that the education of young people, particularly those at the end of their school careers, is absolutely vital. Because, am I right in thinking—the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) is undoubtedly able to confirm this, because he is the statistical expert in this House on these things—that the age of maximum risk of delinquency is the last year at school and the year after leaving school? Does that not perhaps tie up with my proposition that the great difficulty comes when the human personality has to adjust to society and is put under maximum strain?
The young person has to ask himself, "Where do I fit in? What is my purpose? How can I be important and how can I help?" I am sure that in most cases they do not ask what people can do for them but what they can do for people. That is what makes it so terribly difficult for children leaving secondary schools and going out to work in jobs which they often feel are without purpose. They may find big wages


at the end of the week, but nevertheless they are left idle and purposeless. It does not let them have a feeling of being purposeful.
I wonder whether the challenge which comes in the last year at school and in the first year after it does not lie in trying to bridge the crossing from childhood into the adult world, and whether there is not something which could be done by the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Education and Science in this respect. Lord Eccles is owed a great debt by this House and an even greater debt by the teaching profession—greater perhaps than the profession will admit. He set up the Newsom Committee, whose Report went to the heart of delinquency and the maladjustment of the young in our society.
This debate has shown one point of common agreement—that it is somewhere in the schools that we have to put responsibility. I am not criticising the schools. The very moving passages in the Newsom Report on the rôle of schools in moral, religious and social training are a well-deserved tribute to the work done in them. But that is where the root of the problem lies. It is not a matter of blame but of opportunity. It is there that we should train the spotlight today.
A Royal Commission has been set up to consider the whole subject of penal policy. I hope that it will approach its task with humility and in the frame of mind to recognise that, in considering the problems of society, we are working in the kind of ignorance that doctors were working in before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. It would not be a good thing for the Royal Commission to compartmentalise the life of society and its problems into delinquency, into schools, into homes, into mental health and other individual aspects. It is the whole fabric into which we are all woven that it must consider. I hope that, when it comes to crime and punishment and the penal system, it will take the view that the whole of life is woven together and that, when studying delinquency, one has to study the schools in which children are brought up, the homes in which they are bred, the jobs in which they work and ask how they can all be knitted together. The object must be to achieve

for the country the kind of unity of society which will enable people who have the will to accept it and who welcome the opportunity for duty, the path of service and sacrifice in the community from the beginning right through their lives therein finding the kind of fulfilment and happiness in the sense of the Dutch saying I quoted, which is the only true cure for delinquency and hooliganism.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: The problems raised by the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) are in the minds of every hon. Member. He made an excellent speech. He made one or two points which I intended to make, but in slightly different terms. Most of us spent our childhood in good homes, went to good schools, attended to our church duties regularly and looked upon our lives as being a unity and cohesion of education, religious training, background and discipline and parental discipline. This was the sort of trinity which formed the basis of almost all our lives.
In the last 50 years, another very important factor has arisen—the factory. Fifty or sixty years ago young men leaving school went into industries or businesses which were very often run by the people who owned them. Industry was a series of personal units and not of impersonal institutions. It may sound peculiar now, but in 1918 I attended daily prayers in a factory in Newport, Monmouthshire, before we started work. The gentleman who owned the factory, Mr. W. A. Baker, had prayers said for every one of his workmen before they started work each day.
There are no factories like that today. They are all in big units. The boy leaving his home, school and church enters a commercial world which is grossly materialistic and with which the values and ideals of home, school and church seem to be in conflict.
The hon. Member for Ilford, North is right in saying that it is the first year after school, when the child emerges into a world in which the values taught to him by parents, teachers and church, are completely distorted from his point of view, that is the most difficult age of adjustment. When I was an apprentice I was a member of the Y.M.C.A.


Instead of going into lodgings I stayed there for 9d. a night, bed and breakfast. I spent my formative years at the Y.M.C.A. When I was transferred by my company to Birmingham I spent 1s. 2d. a night on bed and breakfast at the Y.M.C.A. there. Wherever I was sent by my employer I always stayed at the Y.M.C.A.
Our adolescents are suddenly flung free from the habits and practices of good homes and find themselves, with high wages and the disciplines of home and church and school, cast off, in an impersonal institution in which no one cares. In these big plants no one is concerned about moral welfare. That is one of the great problems.
This, of course, links up with the position the hon. Member described when talking of conditions in poorer countries, where they do not get the problem of delinquency which we encounter. But we must be very careful here because, in the rural areas of some countries, young people between 11 and 15 commit all sorts of offences against one another and steal and pilfer. They get away with all sorts of things in a rural environment which they could not do in urban conurbations without more attention being paid to them. In our great conurbations the slightest delinquency is something for the juvenile courts, so we build up long records of delinquency.
I do not believe that the boys and girls in these backward or poor, pastoral countries in this difficult age are any better than our boys and girls. Our boys and girls generally behave themselves very well. They just cannot help it in an urban conurbation. They have to conform to the general pattern of commercial and industrial society. If they do not, they are quickly in trouble.
Hon. Members meet many young people. Looking back over the years, I think that we are now blessed with a tremendous number of the brightest, healthiest and most virile young people we have ever had in any generation. We have more good young people than ever before. When I was one of a group taking a party of Scottish young people to Spain and Portugal, I found that they were admired on every hand for their stature, physique and quality of outlook.

It may be that the price of a liberal outlook and a liberal culture and having some of the finest youth in Europe—and I am convinced of that—is that we have to have a very small minority—and it is very small—expressing this great vitality in excesses which take an anti-social direction.
We are producing fewer mediocrities and a tremendous number of very able, competent and fine young people who are socially inclined and who have the right values and who behave as well as the best of any past generation, and it may be that the price we have to pay is an increase in the small number of young people using the same vitality in an anti-social direction.
It has been said that the first year in the factory, the bank, the insurance office, or any other huge institution is the most difficult. Anyone who has worked in industry knows that a boy coming into a factory from school at the age of 15 or 16 is often a bit difficult. We have discussed the responsibilities of the teachers, church and parents. It is time that a fourth factor was brought in—the responsibility of the professional managers who run industry.
I have worked in modern factories where there have been first-class personnel managers and welfare officers. The chairman of our company was as fine a chairman as one could wish. If he found what he considered to be a breach of the right moral standards, he took the appropriate action. Factory managers and executives cannot be let off their responsibilities in this connection. They have a far greater responsibility than the school teacher, for they have to deal with a more mature person and the school teacher is burdened with too many children in the class and overburdened with tremendous responsibility for training young people to think, to understand and to appreciate all sorts of ideals. In the factory, however, from the chargehand and foreman to the departmental manager, there is an opportunity for a study of young people.
Modern industrial executives should exercise some responsibility for the wellbeing and the general pattern and behaviour of the people they organise. That is well within their capacity. Perhaps more training should be given to managers and it may be that we could


learn some lessons from the Americans. British industry today is run not by the owners, but by the managers—that applies tight across the board. These are the people who accept the boys and girls of 15 and 16 and it has to be brought home to them that they have a responsibility matching that of the parents, the teachers, the Church and the State for making a contribution to the general well-being of our young people.

6.5 p.m.

Sir Richard Thompson: It would be a bitter paradox if one of the concomitants of better education, better housing, better living standards, higher wages and increased leisure were to be the increase in hooliganism, vandalism and the senseless acts of pointless violence which we have been debating. Many hon. Members have pointed out that only a small minority of our young people is involved, and I absolutely agree that that is so. Nevertheless, we must draw the right conclusions from it.
What we do for our educational services and our living standards, and so on, cannot be wrong. It must be right to go along these lines. Any Government of any party would dedicate themselves to such things. Nevertheless, if this kind of cynical indiscipline, this pointless destructiveness, is not checked, we face an alarming situation already causing more and more concern to people everywhere.
At one time, it evoked a good deal more indignation than it does now. We have become rather case hardened to the reports we hear and too many of us, especially those of us in positions of influence and authority, tend to dismiss them with a shrug. If we lose the will to condemn these things and to try to act to put them right, we shall soon lose the power, let alone the right, to prevent them.
Much discussion ranges around the subject without identifying the root cause. For instance, it is sometimes asked whether the penalties for this kind of thing are stiff enough. I think that they are, if applied. A day or two ago my right hon. Friend was answering Questions on the subject and he pointed out that the remedies were available to

the courts to deal with these crimes severely if the courts so chose.

Sir G. Benson: Light penalties appear to be as effective as heavy penalties for the individual. I will not speak of the effect on the general public, but there is effective statistical evidence to show that light penalties are just as effective.

Sir R. Thompson: I would not take the view that penalties were not sufficiently severe, but I sometimes wonder whether we act sternly enough with first offences. I know that it is often felt that a first offender should be given a warning and allowed to go, but I wonder whether this kind of crime or misdemeanour ought not to be treated more sternly when it is a first offence.
I believe that the root trouble is boredom. A number of recent hooligan activities in my constituency of Croydon have not had robbery as their main motive. The motive appears to have been just an orgy of pointless destruction—equipment in offices destroyed, liquid thrown over the walls, typewriters hacked to pieces with axes, and so on. I believe that the root trouble is boredom and that the new generation, for whom much is rightly provided and from whom not enough is demanded, is bored and sick and fed up with not being drawn sufficiently into our affairs. We cannot shrug it off and what we have to do is to find some cause, some ideal, to inspire these young people.
I agree with the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow), who laid a great deal of this trouble at the door of parents. I do not think that there is any means of compelling parents to carry out their responsibilities properly, but I believe that a great deal of the trouble starts there. I am not talking about the broken home which is said to be the cause of so much of the trouble. I am talking more about neglectful parents, those who are always out at the bingo halls and bowling alleys, and are never at home when the children come back and want a little help and advice. Those are the people who, in a passive way, do a great deal to contribute to this problem.
What are we to do about it? It is not possible to legislate people into behaving properly. It seems to me that in the home, and then in the schools, we


can do more than we do now to try to put a little moral stuffing, a little more sense of right and wrong, and a little more sense of social obligation into the children. Some of us are a little too afraid of being thought old-fashioned and square to stress this enough. Unless we start teaching the child these things—and we cannot only leave it to the teachers in the schools to do it—we shall never get the responsible kind of society that we all desire.
I believe that youth today is better educated and healthier than it has ever been. It has a better future, but we must harness all this energy and enthusiasm by setting it to work in worth while tasks, otherwise we shall fritter it away in petty crime, violence, and hooliganism. We do not ask enough of our young people. We think it sufficient only to give and to make things easy, but they rightly despise us for what is achieved without fighting for it and without effort.
The answer lies, first, with the parents. They must remember their duties. It lies, secondly, with the schools. They must aim, first, at turning out decent citizens, and not simply cramming the youngsters for examinations. Finally, it lies with us all who are older and in positions of authority to use all our personal influence not to disengage ourselves from these problems, but to do everything that we can to support and sustain the many public-spirited people and bodies who are giving their efforts and their energies to this great cause.
I commend the Motion to the House.

6.13 p.m.

Miss Alice Bacon: We are all indebted to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) for giving us the opportunity to debate a subject which is causing great concern to everybody. However, I cannot help thinking that perhaps we are debating the wrong Motion, because this Motion puts the juvenile in the dock. I think that today we ought to have been debating not only juvenile delinquency and crime, but adult crime as well, because it is not only among young people that one finds hooliganism. I wonder how old the people were who were responsible for hooliganism on the football

trains? I have a feeling that many of them were well over 21, that is, much older than the people whom we are discussing today. Juvenile delinquency and hooliganism reflect the pattern among adults, and the pattern in society generally.
We have had a good debate today. The only part of it that I regretted was when two hon. Gentlemen opposite sought to say that there was less juvenile delinquency in the public schools than there was in the State schools. As I tried to point out when I intervened, the only figures that we have are those in respect of the young people who come before the juvenile courts, and the chances of a boy who is at a public school coming before a juvenile court are almost negligible.

Mr. Gurden: In that context perhaps the hon. Lady will consider the colleges run by the Royal Navy, the Army, and the Air Force. They obtain wonderful results with the young boys there.

Miss Bacon: That is a different subject. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) pointed out, this is a very difficult subject, and nobody can be dogmatic either about the causes of it, or about a cure for it.
We know that outbreaks of juvenile delinquency have hit the headlines, but we must remember that for every case that hits the headlines there are 100 law-abiding youngsters who are a credit to this country. Juvenile delinquency and hooliganism are not peculiar to this country. One of the first things that President Kennedy did was to appoint a committee on delinquency, following which an Act was passed providing grants for research and training in personnel management.
Only last weekend we read of a senseless act of destruction—the mutilation of a famous and beautiful statue. That was not in London; it was in Copenhagen, and Russia, too, has a similar problem with what they call their "stilyasi".
I thought that the interviews on television following the Clacton incident were a great mistake. They showed the low mentality of some of those concerned. But not all hooliganism is committed by young people of that kind


Our university population should be the most intelligent in the country. Universities are the last place at which young people ought to be bored, yet rag weeks are an excuse for hooliganism of the worst kind.

Mr. Iremonger: I am sure that the hon. Lady would not want to be unfair. Would not it be fairer to say that the undergraduates are organised by a responsible student union to raise funds for charitable purposes? The trouble is caused by those who take advantage of that to indulge in acts of hooliganism. I think that one ought to blame the right people.

Miss Bacon: I am sure that what is true of universities is true of young people outside them. It is the one per cent. who cause the trouble. The point is that we have that 1 per cent. in universities, too. They are to be found amongst educated people, just as they are to be found amongst those who say that they are bored. Hooliganism is not confined to one class of people, because from time to time we read about "debs'" parties where high spirits are displayed.
But all this is not to lessen in any way the gravity of this behaviour. We have to ask ourselves why this is happening, whether it can be prevented, and what treatment we can give to those young people who are persistent offenders. This is not a simple problem, and there is no simple solution to it. There is no one cause, and there is no one remedy.
I think that we have been confusing two distinct problems. The Motion refers to hooliganism and juvenile delinquency. I think that we must distinguish between the juvenile delinquent who is probably unloved and unhappy and who takes to stealing and truancy, and gang hooliganism, when young people shout and break things up for a lark. The latter are not neglected children, or deprived or unhappy young people. If anything, they have too much money. Their parents are not guilty of child neglect in the ordinary sense of the term. They are guilty of what I would call child indulgence, but they are just as blameworthy as if they were neglecting their children in the old familiar way.
As I said, there is not one cause, there are many. The home has been mentioned, but I believe that to be the most important cause. I believe that it springs from our education system—I do not mean just the teaching—from the times in which we live, from the kind of society in which we live, from the mass advertising directed at young people, and from some television programmes.
I want to say a word, first, about homes, because I believe that it is within the family that everything in connection with this subject is so important. Over the last 20 or 30 years we have seen great changes in family life, and today there appears to be a great gap between parents and their children. In some homes family outings have become a thing of the past and all members of the family have interests and pursuits away from the family circle. I do not want young people to be tied to their mothers' apron strings, but I believe that young people are left to their own pursuits at too early an age and that parents should know where their children are and what their children are doing.
I turn now to the education system. I do not think that everything can be done in the schools, but I am not talking about the schools and the work done in them as such, but about the education system as a whole. I hope that everybody who has spoken today has read the Report of the Newsom Committee, "Half our Future", because I think that a good deal of the cause lies in what is shown in the Report. Our education system designates three-quarters of our children as failures at the age of 11. I do not think that we should minimise what that does to those in the 11–15 age group.
Mention has been made of the last year at school. The official figures show that more indictable offences are committed by those in their last year at school than by any other age group. The extraordinary thing is that, when the school-leaving age rose by a year, this went up a year as well, although I stress that these are indictable offences and that we have not got, because of the way in which the figures are given, the comparable figure for non-indictable offences.
Young people today are growing up quicker and have boundless energy, which in some young people is misdirected. We should look very closely, as one of the causes of juvenile delinquency in the after school period, at that sudden break from school to work about which my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) spoke. The times in which we live today are much more complicated. In olden days a boy would steal an apple—perhaps there was very little else to do in his village—and he would get a cuff on the ear from a policeman. Today, there are complicated gambling machines, motor-cycles and scooters, and a barrage of advertising directed at the young.
I believe that, on the whole, television has been an influence for good. The school programmes are excellent. The travels and features are excellent. However, there are exceptions. Some of the programmes on television have far too much violence and are written in such a way that the viewers' sympathy is with the criminal. I watched a programme on Saturday, 28th March, in a series called "G.S.5"—"Pay up or Else"—on the A.T.V. network.
This was simply a series of cold-blooded shootings and knifings and protection racket gangs. There were close-ups of dead people, and people went into houses just sweeping everything off the mantelshelf and breaking up everything they could see. There was absolutely no point whatsoever in the programme. Yet so many of the programmes that we watch are of this type. The ordinary, average child from a good home looking at such a television programme would suffer no ill effects, but many people would be adversely affected by such programmes.
What can we do? There is no one magic remedy for this. We must try a variety. To say merely "Beat 'em" is easy and evokes applause, but there is no evidence whatsoever to show that judicial corporal punishment has any deterrent effect. We must enlist the parents and the schools, though, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West said—I know that he is right in this—the schools are doing a good deal, the social agencies and the police. Above all, we cannot separate children's problems from those of the family.
It is not only a children's service which is needed. It is a family service which is needed. Parents must take greater responsibility for their children, but sometimes the problem becomes too much even for the parents who want to do everything they can. I believe that a family service, with family centres where parents could get help, could do a great deal to combat juvenile delinquency.
With regard to what can be done in the education field, I have said that the last year at school seems to be a danger point. In the past we have concentrated on clubs, youth clubs and social activities for those who leave school. I believe that we ought to do far more for those who are in their last years at school and who have a great deal of time after school in the evenings, at weekends and on holidays, because these 13 and 14 years olds seem to have a great deal of time on their hands and need an outlet for their energy in the evenings, at weekends and on holidays.
I believe, too, that it would be a good thing if every big school had on its staff a social worker to help the child and the parents. I believe, too, that we could do a great deal with positive instruction in schools. There are experiments at present whereby police go into schools and talk to the children about breaking the law. In Leeds, at present, we have an experiment as between the police and the teachers where the police are to put into operation in certain selected schools a syllabus drawn up by the police and by the teachers.
We have just heard about the break between school life and working life. It is now 20 years since the Education Act, 1944. Two of the things for which that Act made provision were the raising of the school-leaving age and county colleges where there would be part-time day education for everybody up to the age of 18. It is now 1964 and there is no sign of this compulsory part-time day education. I believe that, if there was not this very severe transition from school life to working life, we could prevent a good deal of trouble that arises just after leaving school.
There are many Government committees sitting. I do not know whether the Home Secretary will tell us today


of any others that are to be appointed. Committees can be very useful. So can Royal Commissions. What we want as well as more committees is more action on those Committees which have already reported. We have not yet had action on the Report of the Albemarle Committee on the Youth Service and the Report of the Wolfenden Committee on Sport and the Community. We were all pleased to hear last week that the Prime Minister has set up a Royal Commission on penal reform. I must say that it has been left rather late in the life of this Government to set up this Committee. I understand that it is to deal with juveniles as well as adults.
Some months ago my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition set up a Commission on the causes of crime and on penal reform. I must say, although I was a member of it myself, that it was a very distinguished Commission. It had some very distinguished people on it—Lord Gardiner, the Earl of Long-ford, and many people who are very distinguished, including the chairman of the London Children's Committee. We have heard evidence from many people over the months and will be ready to report within the next few weeks.
We welcome the Royal Commission which is being set up by the Government, but Royal Commissions usually take a very long time to come to their conclusions. When we become the Government, in the autumn—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—we shall feel ourselves free to go ahead on the basis of the Commission which my right hon. Friend appointed rather than wait several years for the Report of the Royal Commission which is now being appointed.

Mr. Iremonger: rose—

Miss Bacon: I have not much time left.

Mr. Iremonger: The hon. Lady started by calling the Commission a Committee and finished by calling her right hon. Friend's Committee a Commission. Will she get clear that a Royal Commission is one thing and a little private committee is quite another?

Miss Bacon: It does not matter what it is called. The results which we produce will be the test of the kind of committee it has been and I can promise

that it will be a very good report. I have had a few interrupters, and I promised to sit down in a few minutes.
What do we do with those young offenders who persistently break the law? They must be taught that this kind of behaviour does not pay. We have heard today about increased fines. Under the Criminal Justice Act there were some increases in fines, as the right hon. Gentleman will probably point out. Last week we had from Scotland the Report of the Kilbrandon Committee on juvenile delinquency and juvenile courts. This Committee suggested that in Scotland juvenile courts should be brought to an end. It suggested that panels should be appointed by which, if everyone agreed, and the parents agreed, the necessary treatment would be given. I could point out to the right hon. Gentleman that About a year ago my hon. Friend the member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and I moved an Amendment to the Bill which became the Children and Young Person's Act. The Amendment was almost in those very terms, but the right hon. Gentleman, at that time, thought that it was quite impracticable.
If at all possible, I think that we should keep children out of courts. That does not mean that children who break the law ought not to be dealt with. I think that, so far as is possible, we should keep them out of courts because putting them into courts sometimes gives them the impression that they are "big" rather than anything else. We should try to see that they get the treatment they deserve without going to a juvenile court.
If it is something which is deep-seated emotionally which causes juvenile delinquency the proper treatment should be given. If it is sheer hooliganism time after time, we ought to be able to deprive the offender of something of value. After what happened at Clacton, I could not help thinking that it would have been a good thing to deprive the young people concerned of the use of their motor cycles and scooters for two and three months, but, of course, courts are not allowed to do that. The only people who could do so are their parents.
Mention has been made of various institutions, such as approved schools. I think that it was the hon. Member for


the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) who talked about attendance in the evenings. Already, we have attendance centres, to which courts may direct young people to attend on Saturday afternoons and where they may use their leisure. I have been very disappointed at the slowness with which attendance centres have been developed. In the last three years the increase has been from something over 40 to something over 50. I believe that attendance centres are an answer to some of this hooliganism and provide somewhere for children to go on Saturday afternoons while their friends go to football matches and other entertainments.
There are no short-cut solutions to the problem. I do not believe that we can wake up one morning and find that it has been solved. We shall need to exercise patience and perseverance. Old restrictions have gone, and somehow we have not found anything to put in their place. We have muddled and mixed-up young people in a muddled and mixed-up world. The example which adults show to young people at the present time is not a particularly good one.
We are considering a Resolution which calls upon this House to do something. But hon. Members of this House have been as blameworthy as many of the people outside. There are things which in the past we could have done and did not do. We could have implemented the provisions of the 1944 Education Act and the recommendations contained in the Reports of the Wolfenden and Albemarle Committees. So we in this House are just as much to blame as some people outside, or the young people about whom we are talking.
I agree with my hon. Friends who said that there seems to be something wrong in the acquisitive society in which we live. As adults, we do not give the right example to our young people. Until we, as adults can show in our behaviour the kind of life we should like our young people to lead, we cannot be very much surprised if sometimes young people take a wrong turning. I think that this has been a very useful debate. There has been a great deal of ground to cover. It is a subject which is the concern of everyone in the country and it is a good thing that this House has had an opportunity to discuss it.

6.36 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Henry Brooke): I have expressed my own views on many aspects of this subject in the foreword which I wrote to the Report on the Work of the Children's Department of the Home Office which was presented to the House, as House of Commons Paper No. 155, a few weeks ago. I hope that this personal contribution is worthy of the generous tribute paid today by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) to my deep interest and concern. I will not repeat what I said in that foreword. This is a short debate and I trust that the speech which I am now going to make will be read in conjunction with it and as a kind of supplement to it.
At any rate, from that foreword the House can guess rightly that the Government welcome this Motion and warmly recommend the House to endorse it. We are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) for having used an opportunity to bring before the House this intensely important subject. I do not think that he can be criticised for including both hooligans and juvenile delinquents within one Motion, as the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) suggested.

Miss Bacon: I did not criticise the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Brooke: There is an overlap between them, but I appreciate the distinction that she was seeking to make.
My one criticism of the debate as a whole is I think that a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House concentrated in their speeches overmuch either on the social approach or the penal approach. I am quite certain that there is no successful answer to this very serious national problem unless people are willing to combine both those approaches and to think very hard about them both; and not simply repeat, as all of us are tempted to do, words which have been spoken by our predecessors. My greatest plea would be for new thinking about both the social and the penal approach.
Taking the Motion point by point, the House is quite right to note
with concern the continuing increase in juvenile crime and outbreaks of hooliganism among young people.…


I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak described it as mortal to the soul of the nation. Reference has been made to Clacton. Some of the reports of what happened at Clacton over the Easter weekend were greatly exaggerated. I should like to add that what did happen there was not a bit typical of the way in which young people spent the Easter weekend. I happened to be in Surrey and I saw literally hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls roving and hiking over the Surrey hills, which was as good a thing as any Londoners could have been doing that weekend. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves and getting lots of exercise. But these are not the young people whose doings get reported in the newspapers.
The hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) asked whether there should not be something in this country comparable to Voluntary Service Overseas. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is. An organisation is developing for organising Community Service Volunteers, with which I am in touch, and as a result a number of young people are being very helpful in spheres connected with the Home Office. I hope that it will grow.
I must add that the newspapers could themselves help if they would give more space to the activities of the young people who are doing admirable things—not only to those doing mischievous things. At Clacton more than 1,000 young people came by one means or another, apparently with little money on them, intending to sleep wherever they could find some form of shelter. The weather was bad over the Easter weekend and there was little or nothing for them to do. They became bored, tempers flared and a certain amount of fighting broke out. There was nothing like a riot or gang warfare. Clacton was not sacked.
On the Sunday afternoon a crowd of these youngsters gathered in the centre of the town. The police had everything under control and eventually the crowd dispersed without any serious incidents occurring. There were, however, a number of isolated acts of assault, theft or malicious damage committed by small groups or individuals. It has been estimated that the damage done over

the weekend amounted to some hundreds of pounds, probably less than £1,000 altogether, to public or private property.
Those arrested over the four days were almost entirely teen-agers. Seventy-six were charged with offences, ranging from larceny or assault on the police. Twenty-four were under 17; 51 of the other 52 were aged 17 to 21. A dozen or so were sentenced by the courts today. One was sent to prison, one to a detention centre, while others were fined amounts of up to £75.
As hon. Members have stated, the percentage of all our young people who get into trouble with the law is very small, but that small percentage makes an intolerable nuisance of itself. The serious fact is that the proportion of our young people found guilty of indictable offences is rising every year. It is fair to mention that the same is happening in most other industrialised countries, including, if the Opposition will permit me to say so, some Socialist countries, although I agree that there is no reason why we should be complacent about the trend. Between 1938 and 1962 the number of boys aged 14, 15 and 16 found guilty of indictable offences more than doubled—from 11 to 26 per 1,000—and for those aged 17 to 20 the proportion more than trebled—from 7 to 24 per 1,000. When my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak says that girls are better behaved than boys, that may be so for offences against the criminal law, but girls can be as troublesome in other ways. Most of these offences committed by boys and youths were offences against property, and not against the person.
When young people are charged with crimes of violence it is usually violence against one another rather than against older people, but none of this alters the fact that the trouble is continually growing. One point I wish to make clear is that when young people misbehave the forces of law and order must be capable of dealing with them resolutely. It is our duty as hon. Members to see that those forces exist.
The Motion endorses this and urges the Government to ensure that the courts have adequate means to deal effectively with young offenders. It is sometimes


said that the courts are liable to be too soft and that they do not have sufficient regard to the importance of deterring from crime and protecting society. It should be made clear that the courts are their own masters within the limits laid down by Parliament. It is for them and for no one else to decide the appropriate punishment.
There should be no misunderstanding anywhere about Section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933. Under that Section the courts are obliged, when dealing with a child or young person, whether as an offender or otherwise, to have regard to the welfare of the boy or girl. This is important, but there is nothing in the wording of the Section to say that regard for the offender's welfare must override all other considerations—that the court can properly forget about all else. That is not so. The Ingleby Committee put this matter well in paragraph 106 of its Report, in which it stated that the court
…must try at one and the same time to protect the public, to promote the welfare of a child and to stress the responsibility and respect the legitimate rights of the parents. Finally it must satisfy public opinion that justice is being done".
That Section of the 1933 Act to which I referred deals only with people under 17, but the same sort of considerations apply in deciding the appropriate punishment for offenders of 17 and over. There is nothing in the law to prevent the court from imposing exemplary sentences when necessary on young criminals and trouble makers aged between 17 and 21.
The question of prosecutions is entirely for the police. The strength of the police has been brought up by about 7,000 in the last three and a half years or so and is now higher than ever before but, as I have said in public, we could do with 10,000 more police. It is particularly in the big cities that the police forces are short. If we could make good that shortage it would have a quick effect on many forms of crime and delinquency because the best deterrent to the would-be offender is the knowledge that he is almost certain to be found out. Hon. Members can be sure that the police do everything in

their power to protect the public from young hooligans and to make sure that the offenders are brought to book.
Reference was made by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) to the importance of the application of science. I can assure him that a very great deal of advance has been made in this respect in our forensic science laboratories, and I have recently established a Research and Planning Branch in the Home Office. We certainly wish to co-operate with the universities in every way and I would not wish the House to think that nothing is being done by way of scientific progress towards crime detection.
On the question of criminal proceedings generally, I have a twofold concern as Home Secretary. The first is to see that hooliganism and other anti-social behaviour is adequately covered by offences known to the criminal law and the second to see that adequate penalties are available to the courts. I think that the law is adequate in both respects. In cases of malicious damage, under Section 14 of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914, if the damage is not more than £20 the court can impose a fine of £20 or three months' imprisonment, as well as ordering payment of compensation for the damage. There is also Section 51 of the Malicious Damage Act, 1861, under which, if the amount of damage exceeds £5, the offender may be prosecuted on indictment and is liable to two years' imprisonment if the offence was committed by day, and five years if it was committed by night. I do not think that anybody would suggest that these are inadequate penalties.
Then there are the offences of carrying offensive weapons and using insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace. Under the Prevention of Crime Act, 1953, the penalty for carrying an offensive weapon in a public place may be two years' imprisonment or a fine of £100, or both. Under the Public Order Act, 1963—which we passed last year to amend Section 5 of the Public Order Act, 1936—the penalty for using insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace may now be 12 months' imprisonment or a fine of £500, or both. These are not light as maximum


penalties; but, as I said, it is for the court, which has heard the case, to decide what the right penalty is, within the maximum.
Then some of these hooligans may be guilty of theft or violence. If so, they can be prosecuted under the Larceny Act, 1916, or the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861. Here the penalties will vary according to the precise nature of the theft or assault, but, as an example, the penalty for an assault occasioning actual bodily harm may be five years' imprisonment. The law also empowers the court to order payment of compensation by the offender to the victim on any conviction for felony, on summary conviction for malicious damage, or in conjunction with the making of a probation order.
If the person charged with an offence is under 17 the court has power, under the Children and Young Persons Act, 1963—which we also passed last Session—to require either or both of his parents to attend the hearing. If it imposes a fine or orders the payment of damages, compensation or costs, the court may require the parent to pay the money or go to prison in default.
Any boy or girl over 15 and under 21 may now be sent to borstal. My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet spoke about expulsion from ordinary school, but I am not sure whether he was paying quite sufficient attention to the powers which already exist to send boys or girls to approved schools or borstal. Every court in England and Wales has a detention centre available to it for offenders aged 17 to 20. We intend, as soon as possible, to make sure that every court also has a junior detention centre available to it for those aged 14 to 16.

Mrs. E. M. Braddock: The right hon. Gentleman has left out something from his statement—the fact that the juvenile court has the right to require parents to see that their children are of good behaviour over a period.

Mr. Brooke: I am afraid that in a very short debate of this kind I have to leave out a number of things.
I assure the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East that we have not been slow in setting up attendance

centres. An idea which I think commended itself to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Thanet was that of part-time detention, in the evenings. That was examined by my Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders, which recommended against it, although it made certain other suggestions of interest. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has just announced the setting up of a Royal Commission on the penal system. It will be suggested to that Commission that in its studies it should give first priority to the treatment of offenders under 21 years of age. That is the clearest evidence that the Government want to get our system for dealing with young offenders still further improved if it can be improved.
In paragraphs 51 to 53 of the White Paper, The War against Crime, we have raised some of the questions which we think a Royal Commission will wish to look into. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Seymour) suggested, for example, that there might be greater variety of sentences available, though I do not agree with what he suggested about corporal punishment. There has not been a thorough-going inquiry into the penal system since the Gladstone Committee appointed by my predecessor, Mr. Herbert Asquith as he then was, in 1894. I assure hon. Members that the appointment of a Royal Commission will not hold up anything which is already going forward on this problem.
The Motion asks us:
to promote the study of and research into the causes of delinquency…
I agree with what has been said from both sides of the House about the importance of probing into the causes of delinquency. It is then that we quickly come to the mysteries and the great puzzles. My hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) spoke of the absence of religious training. I think there is much in what he said, but that is not a complete explanation. He and I, one a Roman Catholic and one a member of the Church of England, must remember that it is in the Jewish community that there is the least delinquency. I believe that the relationship between children and parents is very near to the heart of this matter. The


first responsibility is surely on the parents throughout.
It has also been rightly said that the moral outlook of the whole of society affects the young. I do not think any of us can contract out of that. We cannot contract out of it by claiming that it is due to materialism or any other "ism". Responsible as we all are for playing our part in creating the moral atmosphere of society, we must recognise that this is a condemnation of us all.
Another cause is said to be violence and false glamour seen on television. As the House knows, I have set up a Committee to guide long-term research into that question. A large programme of further research is in hand, details of which are given in the appendices to the White Paper, The War Against Crime. I would call special attention to the study of the school in relation to society which my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science and I have commissioned from the National Foundation for Educational Research. This involves not only finding the facts about the influence of schools on children, but later testing the effect of carefully controlled experiments in altering the factors in the organisation and life of a school which previous research has shown to be relevant. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak will take note of that. It is long-term work, but I believe it will be intensely important.
I have created the new Advisory Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, and I shall be taking the chair at another meeting of the Committee next week. Its virtue to me is that I have the opportunity of meeting regularly face to face some of the people most closely concerned with these problems all over the country. It also has the virtue that it brings together all the Government Departments concerned and I can focus through it, I hope, the resources of all those Government Departments including Education. I entirely agree with what was said about no compartmentalisation.
The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) will be pleased to hear that the period of transition from school to work is one of the matters in which that Committee is already specially interested. I think this concerns the year

before leaving school as well as the year after leaving school. The school authorities and the unions as well as management are all closely concerned with this.
Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act, which we passed last year, gives new preventive powers which I hope will be vigorously used by local authorities to try to step in before the actual break-up of a home comes about. There we are addressing ourselves particularly to the parents. We all want the exercise of these powers by children's authorities to be coupled with the functions of the authorities in education, housing and social welfare generally. I look forward to the first reports I shall get at the end of the year from local authorities as to the exercise of those powers. I agree with the hon. Lady in hoping that there will be experiments in the setting up of family advice centres.
The courts have to deter and reform. Magistrates and many others must often ask themselves whether something effective could not have been done much earlier, before the child came into court, to save the situation arising. Right treatment after the offence is very important, but prevention is more important still. As I said in that foreword, much juvenile delinquency is due to greed, malice, selfishness or mere mischief, but it cannot all be explained in terms of original sin. A great deal of it is the outward symptom of stresses and strains within society.
The whole atmosphere of the time plays upon the weaknesses of our young people as the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said. We are all affected by our environment. We thought at one time that poverty was the main cause of delinquency and crime. We now know that delinquency and crime flourish in the affluent society. We thought at one time that it might be the effect of war, yet countries which were not in the last war are suffering in this way. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) said that opportunities for exercise might get rid of energy which otherwise finds bad outlets. As he knows, I have spoken out for more opportunities of adventure without lawbreaking, but I am not so optimistic as he is in thinking that this is the whole solution.

Sir G Benson: One

Mr. Brooke: We must take juvenile delinquency more seriously than the hon. Member did.
I should like to end by referring to some words I used in the foreword to the Report published the other day, because I believe they touch the heart of the matter. Those who wish for the bygone days back again may be forgetting that in those days there was often less willingness to understand than to condemn. Simply to condemn misbehaviour is an incomplete and unproductive reaction. It gains value only when it is a spur to action; and the basis of action must be a fuller understanding. Understanding may be enhanced by practical contact with boys and girls in their difficulties, or by systematic research, or—best of all—by both in combination. These are the lines of advance which the Government are encouraging.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House notes with concern the continuing increase in juvenile crime and outbreaks of hooliganism among young people; urges Her Majesty's Government to ensure that the courts have adequate means of dealing effectively with young offenders; welcomes the action taken by Her Majesty's Government to promote the study of and research into causes of delinquency; and urges the Government to intensify the measures for its prevention.

BRITISH GUIANA (CONSTITUTION)

7.0 p.m.

Mr. A. G. Bottomley: I beg to move,
That the British Guiana (Constitution) Order 1964, a draft of which was laid before this House on 25th March, be not submitted to Her Majesty.
This is not the first time that the House has been presented with unpleasant business concerning British Guiana. For over ten years British Guiana has been approaching independence. In 1953 the self-government constitution was suspended because of a threat to democratic evolution in that country. It was a matter of hope that, after a period of thought, the political leaders of that unfortunate country might have conducted themselves in such a way as to bring about independence in a peaceful atmosphere. Unfortunately, that has not been the case,

and before I say anything critical about the policy of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the Colonies I should like to make it clear that I sympathise with him in the trials which he has had to endure in trying to get the leaders of British Guiana to cooperate with each other.
The Secretary of State withheld his legislative hand for a long time in the hope that the two major parties, led by Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham, would see sense. They did not and that is why we have before us this draft Order which is the Minister's way of settling the matter, and in my opinion a very unsatisfactory way. In 1953 when drastic action was taken in British Guiana the constitution was suspended. Power reverted to the Governor and so to the United Kingdom Government.
On this occasion the Government have chosen not to do that. I do not say that they are necessarily wrong. It is a difficult matter, but the result is unfortunate for it means that in a Colony which is mainly self-governing in internal matters. We are taking over some of the functions of that Government. We are saying to the British Guiana Government, "You stay in power and you keep the responsibility for running your country, but we are going to interfere to the extent that we think necessary." The result is that no one is charged with the responsibility of governing British Guiana at present—not the Secretary of State, not the Governor, and not the elected Ministers.
One might hope that the British Guiana Ministers would continue to put their efforts into their portfolios, but it is not surprising if they do not when they know that the United Kingdom Government are busy bringing about their electoral defeat. As the Secretary of State knows, that is the expected result of this Measure. The question is whether it would not have been better in the interests of British Guiana to do what was done ten years ago and suspend the constitution. I do not say that that should have been done, but we are entitled to some explanation of what considerations distinguish the present circumstances from those of ten years ago.
Then there are the rather more basic points. When the Secretary of State


announced his intentions he set out his reasoning in a statement in Command 2203, which on page 8 states:
I concluded that it must be our deliberate aim to stimulate a radical change in the present pattern of racial alignments.
He went on to say that to that end he would upset the present electoral system and substitute what is the most extreme form of proportional representation. There were to be no half-measures. He had to go the whole hog and adopt a system of proportional representation which is riddled with disadvantages and which is quite unknown in any other Commonwealth country.
The right hon. Gentleman decided not to require any party to secure a minimum number of votes before it was given a share of seats and he said:
…in view of the overriding importance of reshaping the political pattern, there would be no advantage at present in restricting the creation of new parties, which at first will inevitably be small.
When I described this in a previous debate as a jiggery-pokery, the Secretary of State, with that air of injured innocence which he commands so well, said that he was only trying to deal with the racial problem. I am sure that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on both Front Benches would readily agree that he was trying to do his best, but the question is whether he has judged the situation right.
I still say that I wish that the right hon. Gentleman's decision on this question was half as wise as it is bold. We have not yet had the election under proportional representation. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman can say tonight when the election will take place. If he can, we shall be glad to know. But all the parties in British Guiana have now had six months to live with the certainty that proportional representation will come about. Have we seen any of them hastening to form multiracial parties and to patch up their differences? Not a bit. Both sides are going on as before—at each other's throats whenever they can. The only difference now is that instead of Dr. Jagan sitting tight and Mr. Burnham gnashing his teeth, Mr. Burnham sits tight whilst Dr. Jagan gnashes his teeth.
I ask the Minister to say simply why he thinks proportional representation will

lead to a reduction of the racial element in politics. I agree that, as he says, it will encourage splinter parties, but since in British Guiana race is such an explosive and emotional political issue I should like to know what makes the right hon. Gentleman believe that the splintering will not take place on racial lines. Since under his system a party will qualify for a seat even if it gets only one fifty-third of the total votes, surely it will be in that party's interest to add the racial appeal to whatever platform it adopts. If British Guiana finishes up with a dozen or more small parties none of which has a majority, those parties will have to form coalitions, and in my opinion they will form coalitions on grounds of race. They will be racial blocs.
I hope that I shall be proved wrong. I shall be the first to congratulate the Minister if what he says he wants comes about, but I see no reason to be confident about it. Indeed, there is good reason to think that his decision will have the opposite effect to that intended. The whole operation is rather like tossing a pack of cards into the air and hoping that one will get a better deal when they come down.
Unfortunately, we have seen some of the ill-advised activities of the Secretary of State elsewhere. A year ago we saw him as the healer of the Kashmir dispute. He managed only to irritate that situation at a time when it would have been better to have left it alone. We are now entering another crisis in the Maldive Islands, and I recommend the right hon. Gentleman to get his finger out of that pie before more damage is done. We have also had the right hon. Gentleman's brave face of non-recognition of Zanzibar—a fine example of how to make enemies without getting any benefit from it. We still, of course, have on our hands the consequences of his own private little Suez incident on the Yemen border. It is a tribute to the right hon. Gentleman's public and Parliamentary manner that he gets away with these blunders. It is worth reminding my hon. Friends that if he had been a Labour Minister the Tory Press would have torn him to shreds for every one of these actions.
It is with this background that the right hon. Gentleman brings us this Order and asks us to let him have his way. Proportional representation is not


common in the Commonwealth. I can think only of Malta and Australia which have it in any form, and neither has it in the extreme form put forward by the Secretary of State. The faults and advantages attributed to the system of proportional representation are well-known and there is no need for me to dwell on them. Some of the faults can be mitigated by some relaxation of the severity of the system in its most extreme form.
The Secretary of State has chosen consciously to decline to require any minimum of support before a party gets a share of the seats. One of the faults is that this system puts a great deal of power into the hands of the central party machine, because it is they who draw up a list of candidates. That is a strong power to put into any party's hands, and it means that the individual member does not have a connection with any particular area because he has no constituency.
It has been suggested that some of these disadvantages could be removed, or at least modified by a system by which some representatives were elected by proportional representation and others for single member constituencies, or by having two Houses, one elected by one system and one by another. I do not say that I would have chosen one of these systems. I quote them only to contrast the Secretary of State's extreme measures in this case, which I think will give all of us a lot of trouble in the future.
If proportional representation had existed in British Guiana from the beginning, I would not have the same objection to it that I am raising tonight. I object to its introduction at this late stage as a cure for British Guiana's ills. It will not do that at all. What it is likely to do—I hope that I am wrong—is to put Mr. Burnham in power at the head of a mixed coalition, without any form or direct power to rule. And then—what? We are back to where we were last year, with the new Opposition requiring the same kind of protection against the new Government as the old Opposition needed against the old Government.
At this time, with the supposedly cast-iron guarantees of the Cyprus constitu-

tion being successfully flouted, no one can speak with confidence about any kind of constitutional safeguards. But, unreliable as many such safeguards are, they are all we have to offer. The Secretary of State cannot go on changing the electoral system in British Guiana whenever he decides that the Government are not behaving themselves. In some form or other, British Guiana will be independent fairly soon now. What we have to do is to see that it becomes independent in a way which ensures that, as far as possible it remains a democratic prosperous State and not one riven by civil war.
The Secretary of State's proposals are quite irrelevant to this all-important aim. Even if the Secretary of State thinks that he has found the solution to the racial problem, he should realise that hardly anyone else thinks so. Those who have supported him have done so, not because they think that this measure will reduce racialism, but because they think that it will put someone in power whom they prefer to Dr. Jagan. It is not surprising, therefore, that the measure should be interpreted as a blatant attempt to replace one leader by another. And since that is the interpretation put on it by a large section of the community in British Guiana, does the Secretary of State not think that this will make relations between the British Government and that section even worse in the future than they have been in the past?
The Secretary of State is entitled to ask me what I think he should have done. But I think he knows. He should have concentrated on working out a constitution which would have ensured, as far as possible, that no Government of British Guiana was able to ride rough-shod over the Opposition.
Many forms of safeguard have been suggested—a Supreme Court with representation from other Commonwealth countries, perhaps a Commonwealth or a United Nations police or military contingent, a treaty of neutrality. I know all the objections that can be raised. I know that we cannot rely utterly on pieces of paper. But what is the Secretary of State to rely upon when a Government comes to power under his system? Is he naïve enough to think that a law-abiding, democratic spirit will


be instilled into British Guiana politicians as the result of their being elected by the new system instead of the old?
There is another safeguard which I think he should have tried. For over ten years now, there has been a dispute between the British Guiana Trades Union Council and the People's Progressive Party. This has centred on the feasibility of Government-controlled unions. The trade union movement has rightly resisted attempts to introduce legislation which would, in effect, give a Government power to control unions.
Last year, some degree of compromise was achieved on the text of Dr. Jagan's Labour Relations Bill. I think that it would be a sensible precaution to get some acceptable compromise Bill entrenched in the constitution. Otherwise this same problem will come up again and again, and it will keep the two big parties apart.
I expect that the Secretary of State will say that these constitutional matters have to be settled at a conference after the election. Indeed, he has said so. But there is this consideration. If a good independent constitution had been devised, it is likely that the voters of British Guiana would be influenced by it when they came to vote. If they were confident that the Government's hands were tied in some way, it might have affected the way they voted. At present, they are being asked to buy a pig in a poke—to elect a Government without knowing the terms on which it will have to operate.
I should like to say a word about the new system of registration which has been brought about by the Governor's Regulations. This makes certain fundamental changes in the method of registering the voters. Since 1953 until now calls were made from house to house to take the names and particulars of the persons qualified to vote. Now it is necessary for people to travel to centres and to apply for registration. This is all very well in compact urban areas, but it presents great difficulties for those in rural areas.
Another aspect which troubles many people is the fact that until now any notice of objection about registration could be given without payment. Now, if someone has been registered incor-

rectly he must make a deposit of two dollars. If he wishes to object to someone who has been registered, it will be necessary to deposit the sum of five dollars. This is a serious matter for poor people. I see no reason why any alteration was made and feel that some steps ought to be taken to restore the position.
I do not want to waste much time on the arid dispute about the Secretary of State's remark that British Guiana was insolvent and to Dr. Jagan's objection to it. As I see it, the Secretary of State's words were a little unfortunate. The Premier of a self-governing Colony is entitled to expect that the Colonial Secretary will not spoil his country's credit-worthiness by public statements of that kind. By public statements of the kind that the Secretary of State has made, he has made the British Guiana Government feel that this is so. The British Guiana Government managed to balance their books. The Secretary of State says that they did it only by cutting down. I think that the Minister ought to be careful, because we do not want in any way to spoil the opportunities that Colonies may have of building up their economy.
I conclude by referring to the circumstances in which the Secretary of State was enabled to make his drastic decision about British Guiana. The Colonial Secretary has, of course, power by Order in Council to make this or any other change in British Guiana's constitution. But in the case of British Guiana none of the fancy or unintelligible restraints were written into the constitution as were written into the Southern Rhodesian constitution of 1961. But in relation to some other Colonies, the Minister has displayed a great reluctance to use his full powers, even in the most virtuous causes.
In Malta he declines to use his powers of intervention, and aligns himself with the Archbishop to preserve quite unnecessary mediaeval privileges for the Church against the spirit of the present and the preceding papacy. What gave the Secretary of State such a free hand in British Guiana was a letter addressed to him by the three political leaders after it was clear that they were not going to agree about the constitution. They placed themselves in the hands of


the Secretary of State. They asked him to settle the issues and agreed to accept his decision. This was, indeed, a tribute to the Secretary of State's diplomatic skill, although I am told that the letter was prepared, ready for signature, by the Minister and not by the leaders themselves.
Three points were at issue—proportional representation or single-member constituencies, voting at 21 or at 18, and fresh elections before independence or not. On each point the Minister decided against the proposals of the Government in power in British Guiana and in favour of the proposals of the Opposition. Indeed, he went beyond some of the points made by the Opposition.
Again, I would point to the contrast of Malta. The Maltese Government got 42 per cent. of the votes at the last election—exactly the same as the proportion cast for Dr. Jagan's party at their last election. Yet the Maltese Government's wishes were taken account of whilst those of the British Guiana Government are turned down on every point. As I said, the Secretary of State was entirely within his rights, but was it wise? Colonial delegations going along to see him will now be advised to leave their pens at home. They perhaps ought to follow the philanderer's advice—"Say it with music, say it with flowers, but don't put it in writing". I regret that the Colonial Secretary should have spoiled the reputation of his office for taking an impartial view of colonial disputes.
I have no hope that the Government will be moved by even the most logical case. They will go ahead with this Measure. After 12 years of office they seem to be displaying a disregard for Parliamentary criticism that is contrary to our democratic practice. But it behoves us in Parliament to tell them that we do not accept their reasoning and to warn them of the dangers.
I am sure that I carry the whole of the House with me when I say to the people of British Guiana: Do not engage in violence. This violence which is going on in that country is not against a dominant imperial Power. It is against each other. People have got to live together in the future. In opposing the

Government I would join with the Government in making an appeal that there should be no violence in British Guiana, in whatever form the elections may be, and ultimately that that Colony will be ruled in peace.

7.23 p.m.

Mr. Iain Macleod: The concluding words of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) will certainly find an echo on both sides of the House. I was myself, as Secretary of State, in the chair for the meeting in March, 1960, and it is largely to reverse what we decided on then that these proposals come before the House.
I have no particular pride of paternity so far as the proposals in the White Paper are concerned. As the White Paper says with unusual frankness, it was in fact a compromise, and three or four years later it is wholly right that we should be reconsidering new proposals. The question posed and answered in the negative by the right hon. Gentleman, in a very moderate speech, was whether these are the right proposals and whether this is the right key to this grim puzzle of British Guiana. I believe that these are not only the right proposals. I cannot see what else in the circumstances my right hon. Friend could have done. But it is true that these proposals are highly unusual and, therefore, it is right that the House of Commons should have an opportunity of dissecting them.
If we look at the problem for a moment statistically, first by race, secondly by seats and thirdly by votes, this, as I understand it, is the position. Taking a very rough basis of 100,000 each, the ratio is, in race, three Indian, two negro and one for the rest including Amerindian, coloured, white and Chinese. It is clear that there there is no majority.
If we take the matter of seats, at the General Election of August, 1961 which followed on the constitution for which I had a responsibility, the P.P.P. secured 20 seats out of 35. Therefore, clearly so far as seats are concerned, Dr. Jagan's party holds the majority.
So far as votes are concerned, Dr. Jagan's party obtained 43 per cent. of


the votes and the parties led by Mr. Burnham and Mr. d'Aguiar collected 57. Clearly when we look at votes the majority swings against the Government.
I think there is something that we are apt to forget in considering colonial affairs, and that is that where a country votes wholly or mainly in a racial pattern the election is not merely decided, as it is here, for example, at the ballot box. It is decided at the conference table. In other words, it is decided at Lancaster House or in the House of Commons.
The key is the plan that the British Government put forward. There has been only one exception since South Africa became independent, and that is Zanzibar, and it is not a very happy precedent for independence passing to a Government which itself was composed of a minority race. In Zanzibar the Afro-Shirazi Party got 63 per cent. of the votes, and if we count Pemba it got 54 per cent., but it got only 13 out of the 31 seats. We understand that this can happen. We can think of cases in this country. For example, in 1951 when the Conservative Government were returned, they had a minority of the votes. I can think of a period of six or eight years running in my own constituency in Enfield, when it worked the other way, when there were more Conservative votes but the Socialists got more seats.
We are accustomed to this rather sophisticated method, to the swings and the roundabouts, and we recognise that an over-emphasis on government, whether at the local or national level, is part of the price that one pays for clarity. But it is a great deal less easy, as we have seen recently in Zanzibar, to persuade a party that knows it represents the majority of a country that it must be content with a minority of the seats.
In considering this question of the decision of the Secretary of State, I concern myself only with the constitutional point. I am not going to touch on violence, except to echo what the right hon. Gentleman said. I am not going to touch on the trade union conflicts, because I consider that those are really a mirror of the racial controversies that exist. I am not even going to discuss

the general strike that followed the Budget a year or so ago, although the Opposition will understand that it would be tempting to expand on what happens when orthodox Left-wing economic views run into the facts of real life.
There are two quotations from the last two White Papers which have got to be in our minds as we consider this. In paragraph 11 of the White Paper on the 1962 Independence Conference, we read:
The leaders of all three delegations stated that they were unwilling to agree to arbitration by the British Government. Mr. Sandys, for his part, stated that, if they were not prepared to accept arbitration, he would not consider it appropriate at this stage to impose decisions against the wishes of the Government party which held a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly, or alternatively against the wishes of the Opposition parties which together had polled a majority of votes at the last election.
That was in November, 1962. A year later, in November, 1963, after further discussions—I think that we should have the words on record, although the right hon. Gentleman referred to them—this is what was said in the letter signed by the leaders of the three parties:
We regret to have to report to you that we have not succeeded in reaching agreement; and we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no prospect of an agreed solution. Another adjournment of the Conference for further discussions between ourselves would therefore serve no useful purpose and would result only in further delaying British Guiana's independence and in continued uncertainty in the country.
In these circumstances we are agreed to ask the British Government to settle on their authority all outstanding constitutional issues, and we undertake to accept their decisions.
That was signed by Cheddi Jagan, F. L. S. Burnham and P. S. D'Aguiar.
So they agreed. In my view, it would be only if the Secretary of State had produced a wholly unexpected solution to this problem that anyone could fairly say that they had agreed not knowing all the circumstances. This proposal, of course, far from being unexpected, was the main point on which the Conference and the leaders had reached deadlock. In paragraph 2(a) of that same White Paper in 1963 one reads:
Despite exhaustive discussion it proved impossible to reach agreement on a number of major questions, the most important of which were:
(a) should elections be contested on the basis of single-member constituencies, as at present, or on the basis of proportional representation?".


My right hon. Friend, therefore, was invited by the three parties to discuss this matter.
From what the right hon. Gentleman said—he did not make the matter clear, perhaps deliberately—I am not sure whether the Opposition intend to vote on this issue or not. We shall see when the time comes, but I hope very much that they will not because there is at least a danger—those who have read, for example, Tom Stacey's article in the Sunday Times will realise this—that such a vote might exacerbate an already difficult situation in British Guiana.
In the last analysis, we are considering whether it is reasonable to expect the Premier of a territory, which is at present a Colonial Territory but which will within a quite short time become independent, to keep his pledged word to the Secretary of State. This, after all, is what lies behind the draft which we are now considering.
I think that it is unreal to consider this wholly as a problem for Britain, although, naturally, the final decision, rightly, remains with us. Other countries, America, Jamaica and, perhaps, above all, Trinidad and Tobago are closely concerned. There is an irony which we all recognise in the fact of America urging us all over the world towards colonial freedom except when it approaches her own doorstep. When I was last in America, in May and June of last year, I discussed with many people, including President Kennedy, this particular question which weighs anxiously on their minds. I myself think that their fears are exaggerated. I do not think, for example, that Dr. Jagan himself is a Communist. In any case, it is no part of my argument in support of the Secretary of State that he is. The American attitude seems to me to be dangerous in this respect. If one puts off independence because one fears that one may get a Left-wing Government, in my experience, the most likely thing to happen is that one will get a Government still further to the Left.
Above all, we ought to consider the problems of Trinidad. We have in this matter no fundamental deep British interest except an interest in an orderly transfer to responsible Government—which will be difficult enough to achieve

—in British Guiana. But, one day, we shall have gone. Trinidad will always be there. To some extent, of course, this problem is always with Trinidad, with, I think, something like 35 per cent. of the population of Indian extraction, but Trinidad manages very well indeed to cope with the complicated problems which such a situation entails. Dr. Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad, is a very remarkable man. He has expressed himself, as have the Prime Minister of Jamaica and the Prime Minister of Barbados, on this particular issue. It would be quite wrong for us, thousands of miles away, not to pay great attention to what they say.
Speaking in the Trinidad Assembly in November, 1963, Dr. Williams said that although he and the Governments of Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados were opposed to proportional representation, his conclusion nevertheless was that, against the background of the failure of all the efforts which he had described to resolve the problem, in which
Trinidad and Tobago were unable to find anything in British Guiana to hold on to",
they were unable to suggest any alternative method which might be adopted. We should be wise to pay a good deal of attention particularly to the words of Dr. Williams. No one can foresee what the final groupings in the Caribbean may be. One day, these countries may come together. It may well be that there is more of an affinity between these islands and the mainland where British Guiana is than we realise from this distance. All the doors should be kept open.
There are two possible interpretations of what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done. One is quite simple, that it is to keep out Dr. Jagan. The other is that it is to secure time. My view is that, if one plans a constitution to block one man, one will be very unlikely to succeed. In any case, the tide of both birthrate and emigration flow in favour, if the racial relationship persists, of Dr. Jagan. I should think that, even under this system, if he did not secure a majority in 1964, the election after that might, and almost certainly would, bring him victory.
But this is on the assumption that politics in British Guiana will continue wholly on racial lines. It is in an effort to stop this, as I understand it, that my right hon. Friend has put forward these proposals. What he seeks to obtain is time, and anyone who has been Secretary of State knows that time is the rarest and most priceless commodity of all in dealing with the many problems which lie upon his desk.
The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East said that there had been no results so far from what had been proposed. I am not sure that this is so, and I very much hope that my right hon. Friend will tell us whether there has been any slight cracking of the ice. There has been one, admittedly very small, new party formed, the Muslim Party, and there are other groups which may or may not develop into political parties. There is, at least, a chance that they will do so. Therefore, in my view, there is considerable justification for my right hon. Friend's action, not only in hope for the future but, to some extent, in the light of what has happened over the past few months.
Lastly, one simply comes back to this point. Almost everybody—successive Secretaries of State, all the leaders of the ex-British territories in the Caribbean, the United Nations, Ghana. America—has tried to find an answer to a particularly intractable problem, and they have all failed. Although this may be a wholly unusual solution, I am bound to say that I believe that it would be irresponsible for Britain to throw in her hand without making this one last effort to bring peace and, one would hope, a measure of stability to a very unhappy country.

7.40 p.m.

Mr. James Griffiths: Like the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), I had experience in seeking to bring about constitutional advance in British Guiana which would bring that country eventually to independence. I hope that I will not be thought immodest if I say that I think that the best constitution yet proposed for British Guiana was the one which followed the Waddington Commission. It brought

British Guiana to the threshhold of independence. In the elections which followed, under the terms of the Order in Council, which followed very closely the recommendations of the Waddington Commission, the People's Progressive Party came to power with a decisive majority, and with a great opportunity.
I then had two hopes: that British Guiana would march in step with the other territories in the Caribbean, and that it would attain independence at about the same time. I confess that I had hoped that it would become part of a Caribbean Federation, something which has disappointed us all. What I saw there was a large number of territories with an extraordinarily friendly people. One of the most pleasing things about the Caribbean territories, the West Indies, is the splendid race relations which have characterised them for generations. Anyone who goes out to these islands comes back deeply impressed by the fact that peoples of varying races live together so happily and joyously. One had hopes that there would be an area in which we could build up democratic governments in which all races would join together and live amicably and co-operate together.
It was my hope that the Waddington Commission would provide the opportunity for British Guiana to march step in step with the other territories—Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and all the others. At that time our hopes were high, for the People's Progressive Party was led by Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham and represented the majority of the people of all races in the territory. Something then happened which I do not want to go over again and the constitution was suspended.
Speaking from the Dispatch Box, I urged that the constitution should not be suspended. I believed that there were other ways—I might have been wrong—by which that situation could have been dealt with. I still cannot help thinking and believing that if that constitution had been maintained, and if other efforts had been made which I think could have been made to bring the Government of British Guiana, the Secretary of State and the Government together, it would have been better for British Guiana and for us. I believe that if that had been done at that time British Guiana would now be independent. I


have said before, and I say it again, that we missed a great opportunity. The story of British Guiana is a tragic story of missed opportunities and misused opportunities.
Tonight, we are considering another new constitution. I do not know how many it makes in 12 or 13 years, but it is a large number. I cannot believe that the new constitution which the Secretary of State has presented this evening, which I have no doubt will be carried and will be put into operation, is the solution to the problem. I will discuss later what I believe the Secretary of State hopes to achieve by it and whether what he hopes to achieve will achieve what we all want, namely, to see British Guiana with a Government which commands the respect and support of its people, which will go about solving the immense problems which are presented and which will become independent and a partner in the Commonwealth. If a new constitution could have solved the problem, I think that it would have been introduced a long time ago. I have expressed views about the first constitution with which I had something to do.
I come to the present situation. Unfortunately and tragically, two young, educated men of the professions who had a wonderful opportunity, for some reason quarrelled and disagreed. I do not know whether the reason was ideological or personal, but that quarrel has had tragic consequences for their country. It has divided the country deeply—we had better face facts—and bitterly on racial grounds. The parties are no longer parties in the sense in which we think of them. I want the right hon. Member for Enfield, West, who is an ex-Colonial Secretary, and the Secretary of State to consider this. These are not parties in the normal sense, like the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party. These are racial parties and everyone knows that. We had better face the fact.
That is true not only of the political parties. Let me say as an old trade unionist how deeply I regret that racial divisions have now entered the trade unions. The trade unions have become divided on racial grounds. If this was a question of ideology or policy, the problem could much more easily be solved. But it is not. The result is

that the trade union movement is divided. I pay tribute to the attempt made by Mr. Robert Willis at the Trades Union Congress to try to get the trade unions together. I deeply regret and deplore that the trade union movement should be divided in this way.
The other day, I spoke out in my constituency about a complaint by the Welsh Nationalist Party about Durham miners coming to my constituency and dividing miners between Welsh and Durham miners. It showed that that body did not understand miners at all.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) has spoken about the proposed constitution. I should like to thank him for his speech and its constructive nature. He asked a number of pertinent questions about the constitution and how it will work. I had the opportunity to be a member of a Speaker's Conference in the latter stages of the Second World War when we considered the constitution of our own country. I had the opportunity of making up my mind on whether I favoured the introduction of proportional representation. I was against it because I believe that in countries like ours that would lead to a proliferation of parties and weakening of Government and Parliament. But I am not saying that I am against it in every country. I am trying to understand why the Secretary of State proposes to introduce a system of proportional representation in British Guiana. As far as I can understand, the whole country will be one constituency. There will be party lists, and so on.
Whether we are for or against proportional representation, it is a system for a sophisticated electorate. I would expect that in a country like ours, if we had a proportional representation instead of voting by a simple cross, there would be an enormous number of spoiled votes. I should like the Secretary of State to tell us much more than he has about the system which he proposes to introduce for British Guiana.
I assume that the right hon. Gentleman hopes to achieve political stalemate by this constitution, to make it impossible for any single party to gain a majority in the House so that it could form a Government and thereby make


it virtually certain that there will have to be a coalition. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his valiant efforts to get a coalition of all the parties which exist at present. Unfortunately, he failed to persuade them and feels that he must now compel them. If he succeeds, good luck to him. But I have my doubts.
My first doubt is that, from all I hear and read, the constitution will be regarded, at least by some people and some parties, as one imposed by this Government and Parliament against their will. I understand that more than that is being said—with what justification I do not know. I believe we must face the fact that, if the constitution is imposed for the purpose of ensuring that no one party gets a majority, elections held under it may be the occasion or the cause of another outburst of racial bitterness, hatred and rioting. No one can read of events in British Guiana without feeling sore at heart. If the situation goes on as it is, the country will be ruined.
It is a tragedy that people there should be blighting their country when there is such an enormous job to do in it and, indeed, throughout the West Indies. However, I am told that it is likely that there will be violence during the election because the constitution will be regarded as having been imposed and that, following the elections, there will be such proliferation of parties that the formation of a Government exercising authority will be virtually impossible.
The parties will be compelled to bargain with each other only to form, in the end, a weak Government without real authority in a country where what is needed most of all is a Government carrying the respect and support of the people. A tremendous burden falls on the poor Governor, who is acting for us. We placed a great burden on the Governor under the old constitution. Let us remember what happened.
It may be that, as the right hon. Gentleman said, there was nothing else he could have done, having tried persuasion and failed. But I believe that he is asking us to agree to a constitution which presents to British Guiana the choice of either having a coalition or no Government at all. Here I agree with

the right hon. Member for Enfield, West that timing is important. One thing I note with pleasure, however, is that if the House agrees to this Order the date upon which it becomes operative is still open. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State has made any pledge about the date or about independence. As far as I read the situation, it will be for him and the Governor together to set the date on which the constitution becomes operative. That does give time. Should we not use it to make one more effort?
British Guiana is in some respects a Commonwealth in miniature. It presents a reflection in small of the Commonwealth of which we are all proud. In that Commonwealth there are many areas where different races and peoples with different languages and religions have learned to live and work together. In another two months the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference will convene in London.
To that Conference will come, for the first time, the Prime Ministers of many of the new countries in Africa and Asia. Why not seek their aid in this? Some time ago, the Secretary of State, when speaking about Central Africa, suggested that there might be advantage in seeking the co-operation of other Commonwealth countries in helping to find a solution. I commended him for that suggestion. Why not do the same with British Guiana?
The Prime Ministers of the independent territories in the West Indies will be here. Among them is Dr. Eric Williams, who is doing such a splendid job in Trinidad. I have known him since he was a student, as I have known so many of them. He has used his great influence already in British Guiana but has also failed. The Prime Ministers of African countries and the Prime Minister of India will also be here.
The date on which this constitution becomes operative is not yet fixed. Knowing that there may be violence during the election and proliferation of parties in unwilling co-operation after it under that constitution, let us admit that there is no collective will to work this or any other constitution. It is, therefore, worth one more effort to persuade. We may fail, and if we fail it may be that the only solution is to


have a device—and this constitution is really only a device—to secure political stalemate.
It seems that the most that the Secretary of State could say in favour of the constitution was that it would buy time. Why not use that time? I ask him to consider his own suggestion and seek the advice, help and co-operation of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers in July on this great problem. Let him ask Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham and other leaders of British Guiana to come here and join in another effort. I intervened in the debate to make that suggestion.
I hope that the Secretary of State will reply to the points which my right hon. Friend put to him, and I conclude by making an appeal, too—by joining the appeal which has been made to the people in British Guiana to come together to stop this violence, which makes such a very sad story that we hear of what is being done, amongst people living in one and the same country.
It is a large country, ten times the size of my own country, Wales, with a population of 600,000 highly concentrated in the coastal belt, with behind it almost a continent, almost unexplored, and left to 25,000 Amerindians. What it contains no one knows; it has never been completely surveyed. For all we know, it may be rich in resources, but to make use of them would require an immense job, immense capital, immense effort.
I appeal to those young men out there. They are young, compared with me. I spoke to them personally, and I told them that it took my party a long time to come to power in this country. I do not say it unkindly, but I join with those who have pleaded for the building of a multi-racial society of Indians and Africans. Let us remember this. We, Britain, brought their ancestors there. Some were taken as slaves; the Indians were indentured labour. We created the problem generations ago. Now we are asked to help to solve it. We cannot solve it by any constitution, unless it commands the support of the people, unless there is the will of the people to make it a success.
Before we try this new constitution, giving the Secretary of State power to bring it into operation, I would suggest

that he should put off the date and make one last supreme effort. I am sure I speak for all hon. and right hon. Members on this side of the House when I say that this is a matter on which the House of Commons should act as the House of Commons, and let us all join our influence together to get the leaders of those two major races in British Guiana to work together—in time: to stop ruining their country, and to save it, and to work out a decent future for it.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: Surely no one would deny either the sincerity or the experience of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths). So I, for my part, should not like to begin by criticising the suggestion he has put forward for a last-minute effort in this matter. However, I am entitled to say in advance that I am not particularly optimistic about it, because I have an uneasy fear that precisely because it is a multi-racial Commonwealth in which one race or another is predominant in each of the constituent areas it may introduce even more racial tension than exists at present. What one wants to do is to take the emphasis off race rather than stress its multi-racial character. However, as I say, this is such a desperate problem that anyone would be foolish indeed to speak against any initiative which might produce useful results.
I think it fair to remind the right hon. Gentleman of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), whom I should like to congratulate on the best speech we have heard here for some time on a matter like this. Some of the people concerned Lave already tried. It has been tried by Ghana. It has been tried by Dr. Eric Williams, whom I also know and respect. It has been tried by two other Caribbean countries. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West said, they had to sum up in the end by admitting that they could not think of anything different from what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has put forward. While not being optimistic, however, I have said I do not wish to condemn in advance what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Llanelly has suggested.
I suspect that most of the speeches we shall hear tonight will say that while we are not completely convinced that what we are discussing will be the answer, we cannot think of anything very much better. That has been the substance of the speeches so far. Some of us are openly enthusiastic about the new plan, as I am; some may wish to damn it with faint praise; but generally speaking, I think he would be a very brave man who here tonight would suggest that he had any other bright ideas now to solve this intractable problem.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) at one point in his speech pointed out very truthfully the great errors history has shown in relying on constitutional safeguards. He said—I think I am paraphrasing him aright—that we could not rely on constitutional safeguards even of the strongest in the light of what had happened elsewhere, as in Cyprus. Later, he said he would favour a situation in which there would be maximum constitutional safeguards, though earlier he was saying that safeguards had proved utterly worthless elsewhere, where there was not the will of the people to make them work. I am not condemning the right hon. Gentleman because of what he said, for I am myself in as much difficulty in knowing how one can make the best provisions. However, it is certain that constitutional provisions, be they good, bad or indifferent, and no matter how carefully worked out, will ultimately depend upon the will of the people to make them succeed, and they will not succeed if the people will not make them work, or if they work to make them fail. This is what seems to me more important in the last resort than all the drafting of the constitutional lawyers.
One of our great troubles, it seems to me, about our present situation is that there are two misconceptions which are very rife in British Guiana about my right hon. Friend's suggestions at the present time. I think that tonight at least we should all do our best to clear this up. It has been conveyed to me that a number of members of the present Government of Dr. Jagan and a number of his supporters think that this is nothing more nor less than a deliberate plot,

by my right hon. Friend in particular, and by Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom in general, to ensure his defeat at the next election. This does not really bear a moment's examination. I do not think there can be one Member in this House who thinks that my right hon. Friend, after all the efforts he has made to get those people together, to call conferences, to talk to them, to get them to work something out, would have had all the while in his mind a dark, devious plot to ensure the defeat of the Government of British Guiana. This is simply not in accordance with the facts. The very letter which my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West read showed conclusively that at the time of the conference here their fate was put at the sole arbitrary decision and openly in the hands of someone they now seem to regard as the master plotter.
So I hope that there will be at least one unanimous message which goes out from this House tonight, that there is no substance in that, and that whether good, bad or indifferent—I happen to think it is extremely good—this is not a deliberate plot by anyone in this House of Commons of either party to try to intervene in local domestic politics out there.
The other point which seems to be made all the while is that we have no right, because we have not proportional representation in this country, to introduce it in any one of our Colonial Territories, and that what we are under some moral obligation to do is to export our own Westminster pattern. There is no validity in this, either. In country after country we find not one whose constitution is based on the Westminster pattern. Among the older Dominions, Canada and Australia have federal Governments. No one suggests that it was not permissible for them to have them because we ourselves had not such a pattern to export. In Malaya there is the most complicated constitution because of the racial make-up of that country. No one suggests that it should be otherwise, simply because similar steps were not taken in this country; whereas there is the most complicated system of representation of the races and parties with built-in racial protections and an elective monarchy. Wherever


one looks—in Nigeria, or Kenya—Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, whether Labour or Conservative, have always tried, in discharging their responsibilies, to find a constitution which would pragmatically best reflect the conditions of the country. That is what my right hon. Friend has tried to do in this case.
Doubts were cast by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East, in opening the debate about whether any progress in Her Majesty's Government's declared aims had been made, and I was glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West commented on this. Of course, we do not have access to all the material, but, at least, there seems to be a sign that there is beginning to be a break-up in the logjam on racial lines. Two Indian parties have now emerged, one Muslim and one Hindu anti-Communist party. There are signs of grouping, too, away from the existing hegemony within Mr. Burnham's party. Therefore, looking around at this stage, at least, the indications are that we may, perhaps, be able to get a break-away from the two monolithic race parties which, we know well, are at this stage as bitterly divided as the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East and the right hon. Member for Llanelly suggested, however much we may regret the fact.
I am determined not to introduce any party note into this debate. From the two speeches which have been made from the Opposition benches, I can tell that the impression which has been given in British Guiana is wholly wrong. It is clear from the two extraordinarily sensible speeches from the Opposition side that there is no intention by the Socialist Party in this country to give British Guiana the impression that as and when the British election takes place, in the event of a reversal of political power here British Guiana can depend upon an imposed change on something which has already been agreed by the United Kingdom Government. I feel strongly about this.
That, however, is nevertheless the impression which exists to some extent in British Guiana, and it is regrettable. I do not blame anybody in this House, but the fact remains that it exists. The danger from this is not a question of a

reversal of the political position here or of the constitution over there. It is rather the suggestion that provided sufficient pressure, intimidation, stalling, and so on, can be applied over there, an election can be held off until after another party has, perhaps, been elected in this country. The consequence of that would be that we in this country were condoning the very violence which we are all condemning tonight. This is a most serious position.
I said that I would give evidence, and I will do so. As I said in advance, I in no way criticise the Leader of the Opposition, to whom I am about to refer. There is, however, a paper circulating in British Guiana called The Mirror, which on Tuesday, 11th February, contained the following:
A letter received at Freedom House yesterday signed by Mr. Harold Wilson Leader of the British Labour Party the man who might be Britain's next Prime Minister reads as follows:
'Thank you for your letter of 18th December about the situation in British Guiana. You are no doubt aware that the Labour Patty's spokesmen have strongly criticised the Colonial Secretary's decision to impose proportional representation in British Guiana. We therefore have considerable sympathy with the contents of your letter and shall be raising the matter in the House of Commons.'
Of course, I have no idea what are the contents of the letter referred to; and it might have been wise to phrase that reply slightly differently in view of the tense position in British Guiana. Yet I certainly do not set myself up to be critical on that score. The interesting thing, however, is the leader writer's conclusions at the end of the article.
On a lighter note, perhaps I may interpose to say that the article next goes on to criticise an apparent plot by the postal services in this country, the letter having been grossly delayed in transit because the Leader of the Opposition used only a 3d. instead of 1s. 3d. stamp. I gather that this was thought somehow to be a capitalist plot.
To proceed to the more serious conclusion, at the end of the article it states:
Anyway, whatever the cause of the delay"—
that is, in the transit by post—
this 'Dr. Mr. Annibourne…yours sincerely, Harold Wilson' message is bound to create


a mood of depression in Opposition circles in British Guiana and considerably raise the enthusiasm of those who are opposed to any further violation by Britain of the constitution.
This is a simple example of how something which, in the light of our sophisticated politics here, means nothing, can be interpreted in British Guiana as an indication that the party opposite will do something which nobody here considers that they have any intention of doing.
Whatever else happens as a result of this debate, we should not seek to convey any impression that we are prepared to play party politics by jiggering about with the constitution even though we may not all be in full agreement with it. The Order having been brought in, and whatever doubts some people may have about it, we shall naturally accept that it is obviously our intention to make it work.
In that way there is a better chance, in the light of what the right hon. Member for Llanelly said, of some intervening point of agreement there, provided there is not uncertainty and the belief that provided enough hell is caused locally, there will be a change in the constitution which has already been granted.
Having pleaded for restraint here, I now add that this must be observed in British Guiana, too. Of the documents which have been sent to me none seem to be particularly innocent in this matter, although, in fairness, I must say that the most extremist documents and articles that have been written, emanate from the Government side. That may well be because it is they who object most forcibly to what is taking place. If the Government leaders over there continue to keep up their pressure in the way that they are doing, there is not the slightest doubt that any initiative meanwhile to achieve any form of party or racial composition will fail.
It seems to me, more particularly as a number of Dr. Jagan's colleagues think that they will win the next election anyway, that the best thing they could do would be to concentrate on the governing of the country and to see what they can do to patch up their differences with the other side and whether some sort of composition would

not be possible. That is what they should do, because I do not believe that anyone seriously thinks that the constitution will suddenly be reversed and that they will go again through the whole of the process between now and November.
Recently, there has been a significant amount of increasingly growing strife. I have received a document which is published and issued by the Youth Leader of the United Movement in the P.P.P. I deliberately will not quote it, because it is so violent that it could serve only further to increase tensions, which we would not wish. But as long as this sort of document, which openly encourages intimidation and attacks the leaders of neighbouring Caribbean territories for being imperialist stooges, is issued, there is not the slightest hope of any accommodation being reached, whatever may be the constitutional position.
Only today I had a recent copy of the Guiana Graphic, in which a long speech by Dr. Jagan is printed, in which he responds to a request to do what he could to lower racial clashes throughout the colony. Much of it is unexceptionable, but I ask whether the House considers that these two paragraphs in a speech which, it is accepted, from beginning to end is meant to reduce racial tension and to urge people not to fight one another, but to work together and to forget their racial differences, fit in with that laudable intention:
So long as we have in our country stooges who are prepared to sell their souls, so long as issues are settled on the basis of expediency and not on principle, there is bound to be trouble. He asked the crowds to bear in mind that the British capitalists do not care if Indians, Africans, Muslims and Hindus slaughter each other. They only want to succeed in dividing and ruling.
Can that, in anybody's belief, be regarded as an appeal to end racial strife and inter-racial violence? Of course not.
I would not want to be thought in this matter—it would be wholly wrong for any of us, whether Conservative or Labour—to take into account, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West said, whether this or that leader is pro- or anti-Communist. From the viewpoint of the constitutional position, this is wholly irrelevant. What we are entitled to ask it that whatever their


party political allegiance in the future or whatever political party they want, they should pursue their aims constitutionally. If I had had brought before me speeches by the leaders of the opposition of any degree of the sort of extremism I have quoted, I would have certainly said the same, although I have already admitted that in fairness that is probably less likely because they feel that they do not at present have so much to protest about.
Finally, we should point out to all the leaders of British Guiana that we are getting a little tired of the way in which they are conducting their affairs, and that when the next election has come and gone we will not be able to go on indefinitely accepting responsibility for their political affairs. Sooner or later they must learn to behave responsibly. So another message which should go out from the House tonight is that after the next election, whoever wins, they will have to pull themselves together and stand on their own feet and not rely on abuse of their political opponents at home and abroad to justify being unable to accomplish their ends, ambitions and lust for power.

8.21 p.m.

Miss Jennie Lee: I support the plea of my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) that the Minister should pause and think carefully before proceeding with his present proposals. As we all do, I devoutly hope that in the next months there will not be increasing rioting and violence in British Guiana, but we are deluding ourselves if we do not recognise that unless some new element is introduced into the situation that is precisely what will happen.
Seen from the point of view of the People's Progressive Party and Dr. Jagan, it looks as though a hysterical anti-Communist campaign, which has been strengthened by outside forces, quite powerful forces from the United States of America, has been intended above all at any cost to keep Dr. Jagan from winning the next election. We must consider this matter seriously from that point of view.
It is no use saying that that is all nonsense. We know that the American State Department has been afraid that

British Guiana would become another Cuba. One of the many reasons for regretting the tragic loss of President Kennedy is that in the very last days of his life he was trying to make some kind of approach to the Cuban Government on the recognition that these new and poor countries needed trade and friendship above all.
We may get some help in this British Guiana situation from the changing temperature of relations between Russia and America. Most of us know what has been going on. I have very good American trade union friends, and when they operate outside America they do so in the very closest relationship with the American State Department. They did it in Europe after the war. They go into a country providing cash, personnel and influence on the side of whatever party or trade union they consider to be anti-Communist. That is what has been happening and it is a good thing that this hysteria is beginning to diminish.
That is why, like my right hon. Friend, I wish that we could have the help of time. I wish that I were optimistic enough to think that it would be enough to wait until the Prime Ministers' Conference in the summer, but I do not think that that will be long enough. We would be wise to share the responsibility with other Commonwealth Prime Ministers, but I cannot see the atmospherics in British Guiana changing sufficiently radically in that time.
We are in the last months of this Parliament and it would be wise to leave final commitments until this House has been refreshed by a General Election. I am not making a party point. No one will envy the Colonial Secretary, whatever his party, who has to handle this matter, not in the next few months, but in the next few years. It will be extremely difficult in the best of circumstances. That is why I suggest that it would be wise to wait for the beginning of a new Parliament, because we would then have a chance at least to make the people of British Guiana feel that we were seeking a solution in their own best interests and not merely blindly anti-Dr. Jagan, or hysterically afraid of Communist infiltration, or anything else.
In addition to the proposals for proportional representation, we must also


consider the effect in British Guiana of the new system of registration, which will disfranchise thousands of voters, who will be the poorest voters. They and those in rural areas will find it difficult to take the positive action of being registered. Existing bitterness will be deepened by this further consideration.
Why cannot we keep to the present situation and present methods of collecting voters door to door, giving the poorest as well as the richest a chance? Why should we change now? Why should we be committed to proportional representation when, as the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) said, in our own country we have had occasions—1951 was one—when the Government have been elected on a minority poll. Quite a number of hon. Members have been elected on a minority poll. We cannot tackle the British Guiana situation, any more than our own, on a strictly arithmetical basis. What it needs above all is a secure Government and a responsible Opposition.
I am convinced that if we stuck to the present constitution we would be nearer to getting that than if we took a country already so divided and divided it still more by the fragmentation which would follow from proportional representation. I am wholly opposed to proportional representation for British Guiana. I am speaking for myself and not saying what decision a Labour Government would have to make. I think that the remedy for this dangerous and difficult situation should be postponed until the House is refreshed after a General Election so that whoever has the responsibility will have time to work it out.
What will happen if we go ahead now? The Indian community represents many of the poorest citizens of British Guiana, but it also has its professional classes and business people. I do not like the idea of having a Right-wing Muslim party, because too much of the communal spirit is developing there. We have seen what has happened in India and Pakistan between the Muslims and the Hindus. There is far too much communalism, and I have a sense of guilt about it.
I do not think that this situation would have arisen if British Guiana had

been handled more sympathetically since the end of the last war. I had my own quarrels with my party about this. I do not think that this situation would have arisen if we had been a little kinder to Dr. Jagan and to Mr. Burnham when they first came here. It says something for Dr. Jagan that after the treatment that he received from us from time to time he was such an innocent as to give the Colonial Secretary a blank cheque. I certainly would not have done that. Is that the behaviour of a theoretical Communist? Of course not. It is the behaviour of a rather too innocent fellow. Instead of concentrating fire on Dr. Jagan, I think that we ought to pause and think of what will follow after him if the impression is given that the leadership of the P.P.P. is too soft, and not too hard.
Because of those considerations, and because of the right hon. Gentleman's reference to lovely race relations in those island countries, I think that we have to ask ourselves what has gone wrong. Even as we discuss this topic tonight, negro families are leaving Indian-dominated villages and moving to other villages to join their fellow negroes. Poor Indian families are leaving their homes to move into the protection of Indian villages. It does not say much for British rule that at this point of time we have maximised these racial differences.
I refuse to accept that the situation has arisen because of temperamental differences between Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham. We must try to bring them closer together. If we impose proportional representation, and this new form of registration, it may be that the Minister will buy time in which to try to solve this difficult problem, but I fundamentally disagree with him. The situation is now so complicated that the only thing that we can do is to pause, and I think that the pause which is necessary while we try to halt some of these communal and other conflicts will have to be rather longer than waiting for the Prime Ministers' Conference. I very much hope that nothing will be done before then, and that all the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth will be asked to give their counsel.

8.32 p.m.

Mr. Edward Gardner: I was very surprised to hear the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) suggest that the Government have been responsible, as it were, for inflaming the situation in British Guiana. I suggest that my right hon. Friend, on behalf of the Government, has done everything in his power and everything that anyone could be expected to do in the situation to try to resolve the problem.
I do not wish to say anything that will excite the troubles in that country or inflame the racial tensions which at bottom are the cause of the present distress in that country. I would not, however, like to think that I was shirking facts merely to be diplomatic. I think that we have to look at the facts of British Guiana and the present situation there if we are to decide what is the best solution.
The first fact is the geographical one that British Guiana is on the mainland of South America, with Venezuela to the north and Brazil to the south. It is thought by some—by America in particular—that in that geographical position, dominated as it might be by a Communist Government, British Guiana could provide a more effective base for Communist propaganda than Cuba. I am not sure whether that is factually correct, but the geographical position of British Guiana suggests that at least it is a danger.
The other fact which we have to face is that British Guiana is a land of hot steaming jungles which are filled with riches of timber and where there are diamonds, coal, and possibly oil. There are riches in abundance for any organised community to enjoy. It could be a land of promise for more than half a million people who live there, most of them on the coastal strip. A fact which we must face, if we are to find a solution which will be the best for this problem, is that these hopes are far from being fulfilled. Indeed, one hears from people returning from British Guiana that these hopes have been extinguished, and this seemed to me to be the case when I was there a few years ago. I found a sort of nightmare atmosphere of neo-Communism under the guidance and influence of two people—Dr. Jagan and his wife.
I do not wish to say anything which will be regarded as in any way hysterical, but at least one can state the facts. We should not be frightened of them. The fact is that Dr. Jagan has declared himself to be a Communist. Last year he gave evidence before a Commission. One of the Commissioners was the former Mr. Justice Wynn Parry. After that evidence had been given, Mr. Justice Wynn Parry came to the conclusion, which he expressed in open court, that Dr. Jagan was an avowed Communist. This appears to be a fact which we must accept.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman saying that during that cross-examination Dr. Jagan admitted that he was a Communist, or that that was the judge's view?

Mr. Gardner: I am saying—I am not quoting precisely, because I have not got the transcript with me, though I would be perfectly prepared to let the hon. Gentleman see the transcript, which I can get for him—that in effect that is what Dr. Jagan said, and it was from what Dr. Jagan said in evidence that the learned judge came to that conclusion.

Mr. Donald Chapman: The hon. and learned Gentleman said—I have got the words clearly in my mind—that Dr. Jagan admitted that he was a Communist. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman stand by those words, or is he now saying something quite different? This is a most unfortunate matter, because I happen to agree with much of the rest of what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said. However, he makes the matter much worse by putting in phrases like that.

Mr. Gardner: I am saying that Dr. Jagan admitted during the course of his evidence that he was a Communist. It was said at one time that he was a Marxist.

Mr. Chapman: That is something different.

Mr. Gardner: I agree that that is something quite different. During the course of his evidence Dr. Jagan admitted that he was a Communist, and it was found by the learned judge that


he was an avowed Communist. This, I submit, is a fact we have to deal with.
However distasteful it may be to the House or to British Guiana, another fact we have to deal with is that Mrs. Jagan is a charming, clever and ruthless Communist. We must face the facts. The result is that we are faced with a Government who, if we do not describe them as Communist because we do not like that word, are very near to a Communist Government and are one whom many of us dislike.
I bring this fact before the House, because I personally will be frank, as many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will be frank. We are frank enough to say that we do not like Communists and we do not like Communist Governments, particularly if they are in the British Commonwealth. We must look at this fact and be certain that we are not being swayed by this, or that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not being swayed by this. I suggest to the House that in fact my right hon. Friend has taken a dispassionate and, to use that overworked word, objective view of the situation, on the invitation of Dr. Jagan. I disagree with the hon. Member for Cannock that he is an innocent. A less innocent man, politically at any rate, than Dr. Jagan I should say that it would be hard to find.
We have to make clear that this decision has been taken for the best of all reasons, that in British Guiana we are dealing, as we all know so well, with racial tensions and racial conflicts. There is the greatest minority party, the Indians, standing alone almost as a bloc behind Dr. Jagan, and at the moment they form a minority although they are the governing party in the country. Then, as was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), there are the people of Portuguese, Armenian and Chinese descent who fall into two opposition parties, and because of this divided vote have up to now become subjects of Dr. Jagan's P.P. Party.
The tragedy of all this is that these inflammatory racial tensions are all the time corroding the hopes which we all have for the future happiness and prosperity of British Guiana. As one reads them from the local Press, as sent back

here from Georgetown, all the speeches of Dr. Jagan, including those supposed to appeal for peace and tolerance between the races, are laced with the poison of race prejudice. It is deplorable, but it is a fact that we have to face. I ask that we consider these facts as dispassionately as we can.
As we know, last year this Colony suffered something which came near to civil war and the largest general strike ever recorded anywhere. Last week the Governor had to sign a proclamation putting voluntary forces on an alert basis. The reason was again that there is the peril of more rioting and violence in British Guiana. It is quite clear that Dr. Jagan has two purposes, one to keep in power and the other to extend his power. With the amendment to the constitution which would bring in proportional representation it so happens that it is very unlikely that Dr. Jagan will remain in power after the general election. Without any amendment to the constitution, it is equally likely that he may remain in power indefinitely.
In other words—this I submit again is a fact—proportional representation will give the minority races—the people who fear for their own lives and the lives of their families in that country now—representation which will be effective; and the probability is that the opposition party will come to power. This again is a fact, and it seems to me to be a beneficial fact, because it will give time, which was described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West as being the most precious commodity, for a realignment of the present parties. It will give time for the subduing of this racial conflict. I hope that it may—I am sure we all pray that it will—give time for this solution to work itself out to the future happiness of British Guiana.
When looking at the facts, one must remember that Dr. Jagan has been trying to extend his power in the country by replacing the trade union in the sugar industry—the Manpower Citizens Association—with a union organised by Dr. Jagan's party. He tried to do that last year by legislation but failed. It is now being said in British Guiana—and this is a grave charge to which we should give serious attention—that he is trying to impose an organisation of the


Government's choice on the country and to replace the official and reputable trade union by terrorism. It is also being said there that the young supporters of the P.P.P. are being sent to Cuba for training as terrorists.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West referred to a dispatch sent by Tom Stacey to the Sunday Times in which he pointed out that children and old men had been killed, houses set on fire and bombed, and acres of valuable sugar estates burnt down. It is against the background of these facts that we must try to find a solution for British Guiana. I submit that in trying to find the right answer the Secretary of State has chosen the only solution that could possibly be expected to work for the betterment of conditions in British Guiana.
We should recall when considering the facts that in 1961 a candidate supporting Dr. Jagan's party succeeded at the General Election. In August 1961 a petition was presented alleging that there had been irregularities and unlawful conduct by members of the P.P.P. in getting that man elected. The courts heard the petition and, as a result, he was unseated. That happened in November 1961. It should also be remembered that after the resignation of one of Dr. Jagan's Ministers a few months ago, Dr. Jagan now has 17 seats against the 16 held by the Opposition. It should be remembered that the seat in the Houston division of Georgetown is still vacant. It was a marginal seat in the first place and had it been fought at any time since 1951 it would probably have been won by the Opposition. Dr. Jagan has deliberately kept it vacant.
I cannot see what other steps the Secretary of State could have taken. He was approached by the three leaders—Dr. Jagan, the Prime Minister; Mr. Forbes Burnham and Mr. Peter D'Aguiar—who said that they were in a desperate position. "We cannot reach a settlement," they said, in effect, and added, "Will you help us and, furthermore, if you will come to our help now we will undertake in writing to accept your decision as final and to abide by your conclusions". This is a fact we have to recognise and to accept in considering whether the Secretary of State was right in what he did last year. He was

asked to do it and voluntarily told by all the three leaders that if he did it they would all abide by it.
It is perhaps not surprising that the Opposition parties in British Guiana now feel very distressed to learn that the decision then made at the request of those three leaders, and agreed voluntarily in writing, is now being exposed to question. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) that it was never the intention of anyone on the Opposition benches to do anything to exacerbate the present situation. I will not charge, or be thought that I am charging, the Leader of the Opposition with any such intention, but there is no doubt, as my hon. Friend told the House, that feeling has been produced in British Guiana.
I have in my hand a copy of a cable which came to this country yesterday. It was addressed to a distinguished member of the Opposition party in British Guiana, now in London. It comes from Mr. Peter D'Aguiar, leader of the United Force, and reads as follows:
Urgent you do all possible emphasise Sandys and all sections British Press that Labour Party encouraging Jagan belief P.R. decision may be reversed. Wilson wrote P.Y.O. Labour has much sympathy P.P.P. protest. Violence in last week deliberately aimed at influence Labour vote Monday. Wilson must make clear statement Labour intention P.R. wise or take responsibility continued arson and racial murder in country so long as P.P.P. possible reversal. DAguiar.

Mr. Bottomley: Would the hon. and learned Member accept an assurance from me that the letter from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was a letter of courtesy confirming what has been said in this House before and what I have said tonight about proportional representation and why we think it undesirable to pursue it at this time? Is he aware that it is alleged that Mr. Burnham has been using comments made in communications from the Secretary of State? It is not unknown in this House to use letters for political purposes.

Mr. Gardner: I am most grateful to the right hon. Member—

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Duncan Sandys): Will my hon. and learned Friend allow


me? If it is in order to interrupt, I wonder if the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley), later if not now, could give me information about that? I am not aware of that.

Mr. Bottomley: I shall try to do so.

Mr. Gardner: I began my speech by saying that I did not want to say or do anything in this debate to inflame feeling. I have been merely trying to examine the facts. The fact is that that is the reaction which apparently has been felt in British Guiana. I thought it right to read this cable. I am grateful for what the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) has said.
I hope that the House in the circumstances of this troubled situation in British Guiana will consider that whatever the disadvantages of proportional representation may be, and I would be the first to admit that there are disadvantages, this is the only practical solution that can be brought forward which is likely to produce the fruits that we all seek. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his decision.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: I have been feeling sorry for the Secretary of State whilst he was listening to the speech of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner). The hon. and learned Member said that he did not want to exacerbate the situation. I can imagine no utterance in the House which will have a worse effect on relations in British Guiana than the speech which the hon. Member has just made.
Every one of us in the House have a sense of the tragedy there is in British Guiana at the moment. If some of us begin to despair at times about the future of humanity it is because of the strength of racialist feeling that still exists. It exists not only in British Guiana but in Africa, between the two tribes of Ruanda and Urundi. It exists in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Israelis. It exists in India between the Hindus and the Moslems. We can take pride in the fact that since the recognition of the independence of India and Pakistan, with few exceptions, during the administration of

the colonial territories by Britain, we have avoided to an extraordinary degree these racial tensions. I do not believe that in British Guiana this racial tension is permanent or inherent.
I have in my hand a statement which Mr. Harry Snell, whom many of us remember with affection, made in 1927 at the time of the Wilson-Snell Constitution Commission. These were his words:
That the colony has…succeeded in creating a basis of unity in the common love of their country on the part of African, Hindoo, and Chinese alike is itself a great achievement, and one that offers bright promise for the future. These separate races do, in fact, live side by side with each other, respect each other's ideals and prejudices, acknowledge allegiance to communal laws and work together for the good of the Colony. Upon a basis of this kind the Colony can build for the future without fear and without failure".
This was in 1937. Let the House compare the conditions today.
It is not for us tonight to hold an inquest upon what has brought about the division between the African and Indian races in British Guiana. It is quite possible that personal ambitions and the fact that the leaderships of the two parties belong to two different races had something to do with it, but I should not be honest with the House if I did not say that I believe that the greatest cause of the division has been the obsession with Communism which was reflected in the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Billericay.
During these years, ever since the emergence of Dr. Jagan, from this country and from America, charges of Communism, White Papers, and money have been pouring into that country which have brought about the division, because Dr. Jagan is an Indian and has been beloved by the Indian community. I believe that this is the greatest reason for the present division in British Guiana. I say that, whilst I believe in liberties and democracies so much, that I would not want to see in British Guiana or in any British Colony a repetition of totalitarian systems of Communism.
May I say how much pleasure I had in listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod). When he was Secretary of State for the Colonies he


had a great record in many spheres. I felt real sorrow in the last days of his administration when in Northern Rhodesia he seemed to deny some of the things which he had done for the freedom and equality of peoples in his previous record. But every one of us must have respect for him and must have listened tonight with consideration to what he said. He read the letter which was signed by the three representatives of British Guiana at the conference in October last year. I did not take down his words, but he indicated that the only excuse for not obeying the promise expressed in that letter would be a decision which denied all expectations created at the conference. I do not want to misquote the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that I am right in indicating that that was his view.
I am afraid that that is exactly what has occurred. None of us was at that conference, except the right hon. Gentleman and the Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, but from what we have heard from those who attended the conference the spirit was created there by the right hon. Gentleman of seeking to reach an agreement between the two sides by impartiality, and this led to the leaders of both sides concluding that if the matter were put to him for decision one would be made which would accommodate the views of all those who were there. If there has been shock in British Guiana, it has been due to the fact that those expectations were not realised, that a decision was made by the right hon. Gentleman which has been acceptable to one side and entirely unacceptable to the other—a feeling that he did not act as an arbitrator but acted as an exponent of the point of view of one party.
The right hon. Member for Enfield, West urged that the proposal of proportional representation was not only the best solution for the immediate difficulties but even gave some promise of ending the racial problems. I listened with some surprise to that argument. I believe that from the point of view of democracy there is a great deal to be said for proportional representation. I think that if we are going to have proportional representation in any State, particularly in this country, we shall need a great reconstruction of our Parlia-

mentary procedure. It would necessarily involve that we would not have two disciplined parties in opposition to each other, but that we would have a wider representation which would necessitate much greater freedom for individuals.
But whilst I recognise the case for proportional representation in a reconstituted Parliamentary constitution, I believe that it would be absolutely fatal in British Guiana at this moment. It would be fatal for the very reason that proportional representation means that one appeals to communal feelings. It means that one selects in the electorate pockets of voters who hold particular convictions in separate communities and, by appealing to them, one hopes that one will secure a proportionate vote which will secure for oneself representation in the Legislature.
The very fact that today, after the announcement of proportional representation, new parties are springing up on communal lines, that there is not only the Muslim party to which the right hon. Gentleman referred but that now there is the Hindu party, indicates that racial and religious prejudices and partisanship are likely to grow in British Guiana and not decrease, because we have introduced a system of proportional representation.
I wish to say a word or two in support of what my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) said about the regulations. I emphasise, as she has emphasised, that if these regulations are put into operation there can be no hope of democratic decisions in the coming election in British Guiana. The system of having an enumeration of voters by going from house to house where they live has not been adopted. Before anyone can be registered as a voter at all, he or she must go to the district registrar's office. My hon. Friend was perfectly correct when she said that this would differentiate between one section of the people of British Guiana and another, not only between the rich and the poor, but more particularly between those who are living in rural areas and those in the towns.
The registration is likely to take place in the rainy season in British Guiana. There will be some voters in British Guiana who may be, I am informed, as far as 20 miles away from the registration office. At the best, if they are to


reach the registration office they will have to lose a day's pay and a day's work. If our claim to be a democracy and wanting democracy in British Guiana is to find expression, we are proceeding in a way which will mean that thousands of people who have the right to vote in British Guiana will be denied it under the regulations.
I am astonished at some of the requirements. I have read the whole series of regulations, occupying nearly a page, which have to be met if one is to be registered as an elector. I am amused by some of them. If necessary, a person has to produce a birth certificate. How many thousands of people in British Guiana have had no registration of birth at all? The height of the person is to be noted. The colour of eyes is to be noted. Anyone who knows the people of British Guiana must laugh at this. Whether African, Indian or of mixed race, nearly everyone in British Guiana has brown eyes. Finally, there is the requirement that fingerprints must be taken. What for? When someone goes to vote and the fingerprint is produced, will there be an expert at the voting place who can judge whether the fingerprint is really that of the voter or not? These regulations, not only on the principle to which my hon. Friend laid down, but in all their details, are something of which we should be ashamed.
A number of hon. Members opposite have challenged this side of the House to produce an alternative to the constitution which the right hon. Gentleman has suggested. This is my reply. Since the conference at Lancaster House, there have been tendencies in British Guiana which ought to have been encouraged and which, if they had been encouraged, could have produced a solution of the problem today. There was the mission of good will from Ghana, itself African and, therefore, making a particular approach to Mr. Forbes Burnham.
At the time of the visit of this mission, Dr. Jagan retreated from the earlier position in which he had insisted on a majority in the coalition Government and agreed to a basis of 50–50 representation with Mr. Forbes Burnham's party. He went very far indeed to meet the fear that British Guiana might side with the Communist countries. He was

prepared to have a mixed Commonwealth force. He was even prepared to see United Nations officers within that force. He was prepared to sign the most concrete treaty of neutralism which could be devised, and he indicated the Austrian Treaty as an example. He even went to the point of accepting the system of proportional representation for a certain proportion of the Legislature or for the Second Chamber. When Dr. Jagan and his party had gone so very far in making concessions and seeking agreement, a Secretary of State in this country who was dedicated to the purpose of seeking an end to racial conflict in British Guiana could have achieved it if he had given his helping hand.
More than one speaker opposite—I am encouraged to say this because it was referred to particularly by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West—pointed out that American influence has been exerted in British Guiana particularly against Dr. Jagan and the People's Progressive Party. Unless I heard wrongly, the right hon. Member for Enfield, West replied in advance to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Billericay. Unless I heard wrongly, the right hon. Gentleman said that he did not believe that Dr. Jagan is a Communist. But America has been obsessed by the idea that a Communist country might spring up on the mainland in South America. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock when she says that in the last days before the tragic death of President Kennedy a change of attitude was taking place on these matters, and I think that America will have to take a new view about the whole continent of South America. I think that inevitably in South America there will be revolutions of an economic, social and political kind which will necessitate a revision of the policy of the United States.
Dr. Jagan is a Marxist. Others in his Administration to the left of him are undoubtedly Communists. Others in that Administration are Socialists as we are Socialists on these benches. That is characteristic of Governments of the new nations. They are seeking the establishment of a new social and economic order. Some of them are Marxists and some Communists. Many


of them are Socialists. All of them are seeking to establish their new societies. If this country, America or any country in the West says that it will decide its attitude towards them and will exert the whole of its influence against them coming to power because of their fears, the result will be an explosion beneath which will create a much more dangerous situation than would be created by sympathy and co-operation.
I want with all the warmth that I can put into my words to support the appeal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) that we should take the opportunity at the coming Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference to discuss this question and to seek a solution other than the solution being suggested tonight. There are the two populations in British Guiana—the African population, descendants from the slaves who were kidnapped from West Africa, and the Indian population, descendants of the indentured labourers who were taken to the sugar plantations. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference there will be leaders of Africa and leaders of India. I find it difficult to believe that the leaders of either the parties or the races in British Guiana would not respond to an appeal by the Prime Ministers from Asia and Africa.
In view of the dangers that there are in British Guiana, and in view of all the horrors of racial conflict between peoples, I beg the Secretary of State, even now, to change his mind about imposing this constitution and instead to seek the lead of the members of the Commonwealth to make a proposal to bring the races together on a basis which will give new hope to British Guiana.

9.20 p.m.

Miss Joan Vickers: I remind the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) that there was recently a meeting in Jamaica at which the Prime Ministers of Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados tried to do exactly what the hon. Member hopes the Commonwealth Prime Ministers will do. Regrettably, they were not successful. These people have been successful in helping to bring together similar races in their own country and, there-

fore, they have had representation from both the African, Indian and Chinese peoples. Having been in Jamaica at the time, I know that they did their best to bring about a happy solution—they were not keen upon proportional representation—but they failed. Therefore, we cannot delay the matter any longer.
I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and for the Colonies will not accede to the pleas which have been made to him by certain hon. Members to delay the matter. To delay it still further might make for worse racial tension.
I have had the opportunity of going to the country on two separate occasions, admittedly both of them for only short visits, and of meeting many of its people in this country. I agree with the hon. Member for Eton and Slough and with the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) that the feelings of America have, in the past, been unfortunate. Senator Fulbright has, however, recently tried to change the opinion of the American people, because he said:
We are confronted with a complex and fluid world situation, and we are not adapting ourselves to it… We are clinging to old myths in the face of new realities.
In regard to Cuba, which is important in the context of British Guiana, he said that
the time is overdue for a candid re-evaluation of our policy, even though it may lead to distasteful conclusions.
Perhaps the Americans may be more understanding in the future in regard to the present Government in British Guiana.
It is a great mistake to take the definite stand or even to prophesy that the Government of the P.P. Party will not be in power if British Guiana has proportional representation. When proportional representation was introduced in Eire, it was thought that Mr. de Valera would not get back to power. His party has been in power ever since.
What we must decide and get the people of British Guiana to agree to, as they could not make their own decisions—and nobody could blame my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for not signing a blank cheque—is that now that they have been given this opportunity and they have a decision, they must stick to it. It


would be disastrous if further riots and upsets were to occur and then, perhaps, regiments had to be brought in to restore peace. Each type of suggestion has been put forward and we now have four of the five parties, including the two new ones, agreeing to proportional representation. It should, therefore, be given a fair chance.
I wish to pay tribute to the Governor, Sir Ralph Grey, who over a long period has done everything he could to get matters on to a happier basis. It was a great disappointment to him, on taking up his new job in the Bahamas, that he had to leave the situation as it was.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has also shown great patience. He has visited the country, attended conferences and devoted a great deal of time to seeing individual people. I hope that the House supports him in the proposal which he has put before us and that we will encourage the people of British Guiana to make it work.
Having visited the country on two occasions, I agree with the Wynn Parry Commonwealth Commission which inquired into the disturbances of 1962. It said that the racial difference as it existed did not go very deep.
I personally think that it is the political racial feelings which go deep, not racial feelings between individual people. When there is one race in particular in power it always means that the other races are suspicious of them when they bring in a new order or a new law, because they think that that is being done on a racial basis. This is, of course, not the situation as the Government see it. They bring in a certain Act because they feel it is needed for the country. It is when there is one race in power that it is open to suspicion by the other races.
The Indian population at present, I understand, is about 315,000 and increasing at an annual rate of 4·4 per cent. The negroes at the moment number about 204,000 and are increasing at a rate of about 3 per cent. People of the other races number about 120,000. At the present rate of increase the Indians will have an overall majority by 1968.
I hope that given this proportional representation, and realising that it is to

be done on a just basis, it will work, and that it will prove, as time goes on, one which will give security to all races in the community. I have had an opportunity of seeing for myself how the races can get on together. I went to the opening of a self-help housing scheme on my last visit. It was on a plot of land on which individuals had been building their own houses. I was invited to attend as a guest. The Minister of Housing, who was an Indian, performed the opening ceremony and his wife presented the keys to individual tenants. Mr. Burnham, at that time the Mayor of Georgetown, made a congratulatory speech, and it was a European who gave the blessing. Everybody afterwards had a very happy party. I am quite certain that it is on this basis that people will work together. It is only when they get political divisions that they are drawn apart.
At the moment there this desperate need to get stable government because the economy is really being ruined by the strikes. This has been mentioned by one or two of my hon. Friends, and I regret, as they do, that P.E.P. has supported piratical unions because there was the excellent work done by Mr. Willis—I think it was—of the Trades Union Congress who went out there and settled the trade unions on a non-political basis. It is extremely helpful, and I think we should pay tribute to the trade unions for the way they have worked in the past. But now a great many people do live in fear, and it is very unfortunate that there are these racial strikes going on, carried on in the every-day life of the working people, preventing them, through fear, from going to work, and giving them no rest in their villages at night.
I would suggest that as all parties have signed this agreement they should now try to make it workable. On the other hand, I should like to support what was said by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough and the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock in regard to registration difficulties. The Colonial Office Commission in 1928 stated:
With respect to our contention that Government does not offer reasonable facilities for the registration of voters we would draw attention to a return laid on the table of the Combined Court by Government at the first


general session of 1927 where it is admitted that of the 5,192 claims filed in April last, 420 were rejected for the lack of formality.
The people are to register themselves in a new type of manner. But many are illiterate and a number of immigrants will not be able to produce either baptismal or birth certificates. Thus, a great many will be disfranchised. I hope my right hon. Friend will look into this to se if he cannot introduce a system that all parties have requested—the use of photographs instead of fingerprints. As the hon. Member for Eton and Slough said, it will not be easy to distinguish people by the colour of their eyes or by their height. The photograph system has been used in the Bahamas successfully. It is a better and easier method.
I hope that more help will be given to individuals about filling in the forms, because I do not know how many Amerindians will be able to manage otherwise. I should also like to know about the proposal that money will have to be put in for being improperly registered—I gather this sum will be about 8s. 4d.—or, if there are objections, which will cost about £1. Will this money be refunded if the objections are not upheld?
Will my right hon. Friend also see that every facility is given through the radio to inform everyone about this new method of voting? The proportional representation system is not very easy when one comes to put one's mark on the ballot paper. I hope that every detail will be given to the voters.
I am sure that the feelings in British Guiana are politically racial and not individually racial—in other words, if it were not for politics everyone would get on happily. I pay tribute to the police and the steadfast way in which they have worked in difficult times. Great tribute must also be paid to the British residents.
When I was there I took the opportunity to visit the Grenadier Guards, who were standing by, and I went with them into the jungle to see them practising jungle warfare. These are lads from all over the United Kingdom and they have done a magnificent job. Their behaviour has obviously eased tension. They have made great friends with many of the people. Very often we do not realise how much our troops have

helped in many countries where trouble has arisen and what great ambassadors they are for Britain.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will see that this Order goes through tonight without delay, because the more delay there is the greater will be the tension and uncertainty.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. Donald Chapman: I am glad that the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devon-port (Miss Vickers) spoke of the example, forebearance and invaluable help of our troops in British Guiana. When we remember the terrible things happening out there, the example shown by our Forces is something we can be proud of, just as we can be proud of it as they serve in so many other parts of the world. I am very pleased that the hon. Lady made that point.
This has been a very responsible and restrained debate with the exception of a speech by one hon. Member opposite. I hope I can follow in the general tone of the debate. I was particularly pleased with the moderate way in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) began the discussion. His speech showed that the Labour Party was making a careful, balanced and moderate approach to this problem. That is the kind of approach with which I agree. However, I hope that my right hon. Friend will allow me to say, when I go a little further into what I have to say, that I cannot agree with everything he said.
For reasons which I want to set out, I personally believe that the decision to have proportional representation, even though we may criticise the right hon. Gentleman for the emergence of the system, can be finally turned to good. Given the situation, our thoughts should be addressed to how we can now create something good, something settled, something which will bring racial harmony to British Guiana. It is on the eventual outcome that I disagree a little with my right hon. Friend.
As the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) said, British—I use the word almost automatically; although it is no longer the British West Indies, I always think of it as the British West Indies—the West Indies


throughout the history of the last ten or fifteen years and even before have been extraordinarily fortunate in the calibre of the leaders who have emerged in these tiny islands.
I think, first, of Mr. Norman Manley in Jamaica, who is a leader of world stature. He is a statesman on the world platform and not just a leader or former leader of 1,750,000 people in Jamaica. I also think of Dr. Eric Williams, and I agree that the future in the West Indies may lie more with Dr. Eric Williams than with anyone. It is possible that new groupings will emerge, mainly because of his leadership, and at all costs we must keep all doors in the area open so that some new federation of some kind may eventually emerge, a new federation of which British Guiana can be a part. I think that this is fundamental to the future.
I mention only one thing as an example. While the present leadership in British Guiana is probably representative of the people of British Guiana, one of the things which should clearly happen is for migration in the West Indies to include migration from Jamaica and other over-populated areas to British Guiana and British Honduras. They are outlets for these populations. It has to come in time and we should keep that door open in the hope that that kind of thing can eventually emerge.
However, British Guiana is one of the parts of the West Indies where the great examples of leadership in the other islands do not occur. I do not want to seem to be denigrating the leaders in British Guiana. We have been very fortunate by world standards with the rest of them and we cannot have fabulous luck all the way round. This is one of the tragedies of British Guiana. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) said that Dr. Jagan was not a Communist and the hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) said that he was and made him out to be, whatever else, a rogue.
I do not think that he is a rogue. He may be a fool and he may be weak and not up to the standards of the remainder of the West Indian leaders, but he is not a rogue. On that I disagree with the hon. and learned Gentleman because,

whatever else he said, that was the only interpretation of his view of Dr. Jagan.

Mr. Gardner: I did not use the word "rogue", and I never intended to use the word "rogue".

Mr. Chapman: I accept that, but the whole House heard what the hon. and learned Gentleman said and I think that mine was a fair interpretation. He made him out to be an evil man in most senses of the word, and that is wrong. British Guiana has just not had leadership of enormous calibre. I think that tonight the House has missed one essential factor in the present situation. That factor emerges from an examination of the history of the last 10 years. What happened under what we might call the-first-past-the-post type of electoral system—the one that we have here—was that Dr. Jagan, particularly in the 'fifties, had a built-in reason for being unwilling to adopt the obvious solution for British Guiana—a coalition Government. He was doing very well, thank you, out of the present electoral system. All the cards were in his hands. Why should he make the gesture of a coalition on the basis of equality, which is essential to the solution of the problem in British Guiana? Why should he make the gesture of a coalition with Mr. Burnham when all the cards were clearly in his hands under a system which gave him a majority of seats although not a majority of votes? He had all the cards, and he was determined to hang on to them.
I do not want to exacerbate the situation, but I was very impressed with the statement made by a young man who came to this country from British Guiana. I am referring to Mr. Laurence Mann who was a Minister in Dr. Jagan's Government. He left the country because he was disgusted with Dr. Jagan's party. I propose to quote his statement to show how the situation arose in which there was very little chance of a coalition on the basis of equality. At one period he was charged by Dr. Jagan with negotiating with the Opposition in an attempt to find some basis for a coalition, and in his statement he said:
It became clear during those discussions that what was needed was not so much a constitutional device for the electoral advantage of one side or another, but a guaranteed co-operation between the two parties.


Here was a man who realised that it was important that the coalition should be on the basis of absolute trust and equality. He went on to say:
When this proposal was put to our executive"—
that is the executive of Dr. Jagan's party—
it was laughed out of court. The prevalent feeling was that an army was a more useful proposition for British Guiana.
In other words, he was saying that his own party was unwilling to have a coalition on the basis of equality, and that it thought that an army to hold on to power once it got it—and independence with it—was the real thing that mattered. That is the sort of tragedy on which the 'fifties were built. The situation arose because of the refusal of Dr. Jagan and his party to think in terms of a real coalition with the Opposition party, which was the only way of solving the racial tensions.
The crucial point that has been missed this evening is what is happening under the right hon. Gentleman's scheme. Under the threat of proportional representation the rôles are becoming reversed. As a result of a proportional representation election, Dr. Jagan may just have a majority of seats, but not an overall majority. Because of the bitter relations which have lingered on since the 'fifties, it is possible that Mr. Burnham will refuse to serve with Dr. Jagan in a coalition Government. He may well say, "I prefer instead to have a coalition with the United Force or with several of the splinter parties, and we shall then drive Dr. Jagan out of office".
Should that happen, racial hellfire will be let loose again, because Dr. Jagan will be able to storm round the country saying, "I told you so. I have been gerrymandered out of office", and the conflict, the fighting, and the killing will go on again.
This is the danger. In other words, the cards are now all in Mr. Burnham's hands, instead of them being all in Dr. Jagan's hands. Mr. Burnham now does not want a coalition with Dr. Jagan on terms of equality, because he thinks that proportional representation will put him in power. He now feels that the rôles are reversed; he feels a sense of power; he feels that he is to be the new ruler

of British Guiana, as he might well be under this system.
The real challenge we ought to be making to British Guiana tonight is this. We ought to be saying to Mr. Burnham, more than to anybody else in these circumstances, "We hope you will rise above this situation, in the interests of your country". It is for Mr. Burnham now to make a big gesture and say whether, given the results of a proportional representation election, he is willing to serve in a coalition with Dr. Jagan. This is the only hope for British Guiana. It is the one thing on which we should be concentrating this evening.
I have tried to check whether the right hon. Gentleman's announcement is moving the two sides together in the way I want to see. My hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) said that there is now a new willingness on the part of Dr. Jagan's party to think in terms of coalition. As Dr. Jagan's party will not do quite so well out of proportional representation as it did out of the old system, it now has a newfound interest in a coalition. A most significant speech was made in British Guiana on 14th April by the Education Minister, Mr. Nunes, Dr. Jagan's No. 2. The great headline of the speech is this:
P.P.P.-P.N C. Coalition the only answer under P.R.
So Dr. Jagan's party is saying clearly,
We are willing to serve in a coalition".
Try as I may and watch as I may, I cannot find Mr. Burnham making the same statement. He is going about the country today, under immense provocations, trying to keep people calm, telling the negro population not to respond to attacks on them and not to take part in racial riots. I am not saying that Dr. Jagan is not doing that. To some extent he is doing that as well. The point I am making is that there is no obvious gesture on the part of Mr. Burnham to say that he is willing at last, even now when the cards are all in his hands, to have a coalition on the basis of equality with Dr. Jagan. This must be the solution, otherwise, with Dr. Jagan in opposition, the country will be set alight again after the elections which the right hon. Gentleman is bringing about.
It is in this sense, but only in this sense, that I disagree with my right hon.


Friend. I join with my right hon. Friend in criticising the lack of impartiality displayed by the right hon. Gentleman in some of his actions. When compared with what he has done in Malta, this is so obvious that it is noted in places like British Guiana. I say to the right hon. Gentleman in all friendliness that, on obtaining his signed piece of paper giving him the opportunity and the signed agreement to make all the decisions, he would have been a wiser man if he had sought something which looked more like a compromise, instead of something which looks as if it is stacking everything against Dr. Jagan. The right hon. Gentleman, in his general imposition of a system, could have sought things which would have looked a little better to those in British Guiana.
I have a third criticism. Despite all the right hon. Gentleman's diligence, activity and energy in this matter, there ought to be more energy in British Guiana. I do not know what the answer is. This is the right hon. Gentleman's problem not mine. I do not think we can keep on trying to solve this problem by sitting here in London. We must have more consultations going on all the time with more high-powered Commissioners out there in the Caribbean trying to bring not only nations but parties within British Guiana together. I join with my right hon. Friend in criticising the semblance at least of some of the right hon. Gentleman's activities. But in the end I come back to the only real point which I wish to make. Having arrived at P.R. we may as well get some result out of it. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough. At least one half of the nation is in favour of coalition on the basis of equality. The next half must be Mr. Burnham, and I want the right hon. Gentleman to make the challenge to Mr. Burnham in the hope that he will respond.
In the early part of the debate one hon. Gentleman—in fact more than one—asked what a Labour Government would do about the situation. I think that the speech of my right hon. Friend made the position clear. I did not hear him make any promises that Dr. Jagan

could misuse. Dr. Jagan cannot now—I think this point should come out tonight—go round British Guiana stirring up trouble and saying, "Let us keep the pot boiling until a Labour Government comes, because they would change it all". No such pledge has been given by the Labour Party spokesman and I was pleased to note that. The message which should go out to Dr. Jagan and to Mr. Burnham is that the job ahead is to make proportional representation work if it comes into practice before a general election is held. More important than that, the job is to find a basis of racial tolerance based on living together which can be the only future for any change from proportional representation for some years hence.
I see it like this: get pledges from the two sides, not from one. If necessary the proportional representation system will have to go through with elections based on it. It must be made to work as the only basis left for finding racial tolerance if we can see that emerging in the next four years—or X years, I do not care what is the figure. Let us say that we are willing to reconsider it and move to some other system which they prefer once it has been useful in bringing the result we all want, in other words, the tolerance of Indian for negro which is the basic requirement for justice, harmony and peaceful living in that country.
In sum, all I wish to say is that I do not feel quite so despondent about the situation as does my right hon. Friend. Given the chance now of elections, given the challenge to Mr. Burnham to respond to the situation now that the cards are in his hands, I think good can yet emerge from this terrible situation. I have been fortified all the way through in my sorrow—not in my sorrow, my anxiety—about this situation by another factor which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West. That is the attempt made by Dr. Eric Williams.
I have here the OFFICIAL REPORT of the speech of Dr. Eric Williams in his own Assembly at Trinidad. It runs to 15 pages and reveals the attempts he made in recent years to bring some rapprochement between the parties and to find an agreeable constitution for British Guiana. This is the sort of thing


he says—I think that some of his speech was quoted by the right hon. Gentleman—
There was at no time any response at all, neither favourable nor unfavourable, to the proposition which was presented to British Guiana…
And at the end of his speech he said:
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I hate to say it again: all our efforts failed. To put it a little more crudely, perhaps, we were unable to find anything in British Guiana to hold on to.
There are 15 pages setting out the attempts of the friends of Dr. Jagan and British Guiana in that part of the world to bring to that troubled country the peace that it had failed to find.
Finally, I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman. He had to find some solution. He had to try something and show determination in putting it through. I am sorry that some of the things he did are open to criticism in the way I have expressed. Nevertheless, I wish him luck in the venture he has undertaken and I hope that the whole House will unite in saying to the people of British Guiana, "If this must go through, then make it work and get out of it the racial tolerance which is the only basis on which your nation can exist in the future".

9.55 p.m.

Sir Douglas Marshall: All hon. Members will agree with the final words of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman). I rise to speak for only a few minutes because the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) and myself and another Member of this House journeyed to British Guiana last September. While there we had the opportunity of hearing the leaders of all the political parties, the trade unions and others who were prepared to say what they really thought to us. I must refer to the great courtesy and kindness which was extended to us. One of the most pathetic things is the necessity for this Order to be before the House.
Those of us who have known for years and have frequently visited the islands in the Caribbean have always felt that the people there had found something precious—that different races can live together, respect each other and can

form a nation. It is a shame that this has not yet been found possible in British Guiana.
While there, and having taken advantage of listening to every point of view, I came to the conclusion that fear was at the basis of everything. They feared what would happen in the future. They feared what would happen if independence came very quickly. Time and again their fears were brought home to me. Having heard the speeches from hon. Members opposite, I must assume that they desire somehow to put off making a decision now and to place the responsibility for ultimately making one on somebody else. As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) pointed out, the most important thing is for a decision to be made now. The only real chance of achieving peace and understanding in British Guiana is for a decision to be taken at this moment.
I have been somewhat surprised at the different points of view expressed about registration. Hon. Members have not really discussed the deep feeling which I found to exist throughout British Guiana about the original registration. I understood that this was originally done by the three parties, which collected the registrations. It is felt that it should be taken out of their hands and put on a sort of Civil Service basis. I therefore do not agree that the registration system should go back to its old form.
It has been recognised by all hon. Members that my right hon. Friend has had a tremendous responsibility placed on him. In view of the great bitterness that has existed in British Guiana and the difficulties that have confronted him, my right hon. Friend has indeed been confronted with a difficult task.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport that this is not simply a racial problem. My belief is that as these races worked together before, they can work together again if the political content is taken out of the problem. My right hon. Friend has made a brave decision, one which in the end, let us all hope, will be proved to be the right decision and that they will find a way whereby they can get a form of political agreement which will give endless opportunity to realise the


wealth in British Guiana and reduce the 20 per cent. unemployment there at present.

10.1 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Duncan Sandys): I think everyone who has listened to this debate will feel that we have been present on an exceptional occasion, on which a great number of most interesting and tremendously sincere speeches have been made from both sides of the House. Everyone who took part showed a deep and genuine desire to see a solution found to this very unhappy problem.
The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) and others were good enough to recognise the sincerity of my efforts to bring about agreement between the parties in British Guiana. I particularly appreciated the very generous words of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman). My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) summed up much that had been said, when he said that most hon. Members who had spoken, were not sure whether the plan which I have decided upon will work, but none was able to suggest any other solution.
No one during the course of this debate has said how he would solve the problem differently from the manner in which I have proposed, except possibly—I am not sure if he meant it—the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East, who hinted that it might perhaps have been better to suspend the constitution, as was done on a previous occasion. I think that on reflection the House will feel that that is the last step which the British Government should take and that, despite all the difficulties and uncertainties through which we are now passing, we ought to hesitate very much before suspending the constitution.
The right hon. Member said that he wished my decision had been as wise as it had been bold. My right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) said that he considered my plan to be unusual but right. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East, who opened the debate, agreed with my objective, but doubted

whether my scheme would achieve it. He thought that my intervention in British Guiana would be as unfortunate as my interventions elsewhere. I think that he was a little unfair there, but this is all good stuff in a debate.
The right hon. Gentleman quoted one or two examples of where he thought that my intervention had been so unfortunate. One was in regard to Kashmir. I think that I am entitled to remind him of the reaction of his hon. Friends to my journey to Kashmir. After I had made my statement on my return from India, and had explained to the House the efforts which I had made to try and bring about negotiations between India and Pakistan on the question of Kashmir, this is what the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said:
The whole House will feel that the right hon. Gentleman's journey was both necessary and valuable and would wish to congratulate him on its results."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd December, 1962; Vol. 668, c. 936.]
Therefore, I do not think that that jibe was altogether justified; but let us leave it at that.
I should like to start by dealing with a few specific points raised in the debate before I come to the main issues that were discussed. The right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), who always makes such a valuable contribution from his own personal experience in debates of this kind, said that proportional representation was too complicated a system and that it would have been much simpler for less sophisticated people to vote by the "first past the post" system. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman in the least. Under the system which we have here, one has to put a cross against the name of a candidate. It is not always easy, as we know ourselves when we go into a polling booth, to remember exactly who is the party candidate we wish to support. He is not usually identified, whereas under a proportional representation system the process is very much simpler.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested that one had to put a cross against 1, 5, 8, 12 or 19, or whatever the figure might be, but that is not the system that is proposed. In the case of British Guiana, as in the case of most countries that go in for this kind of proportional representation, there will be the possibility of


voting for party lists. It will be quite simple to put one's cross against one party list, and in that way cast one's vote for all the candidates on that list. If people want to pick and choose they can do so; but that is a very sophisticated form of voting, for one candidate in one list and another in another. This is quite a simple system and should not give rise to undue difficulty.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Sir Douglas Marshall) pointed out that the existing electoral system has been open to a great deal of criticism for a long time, has given rise to many allegations of cheating and impropriety of all kinds, and is by no means an ideal arrangement, and that therefore there is no strong case on electoral grounds for preserving the present system. Several hon. Members have criticised the decision to require electors to apply for registration. Hitherto people have been placed on the register automatically on the basis of reports from what are called enumerators, who go from house to house compiling a list of persons whom they consider eligible to vote.
Under the new system the elector will have to go to the registrar and secure from him his identity card. It is of course true that that means that people who do not bother to register will not have the vote, but on the other hand, I think that this system will avoid a great deal of cheating, or allegations of cheating, since representatives of the political parties will be allowed to be present at the process of registration in order to see that there is fair play.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) and other hon. Members asked why we had adopted the system of fingerprinting, and not photographs for identification. Apart from the practical difficulties and expense of photographing 250,000 people, some of them in remote areas, we are satisfied from experience in other countries, such as Singapore and Tanganyika, that fingerprints are, in fact, a more reliable method of identification than photographs. I understand that when the identity of anyone is challenged at the polling station, that person is asked to put his thumb on the ink pad and on the paper, and that it is comparatively easy, even for people who are not fingerprint experts, to see whether those

fingerprints are obviously different. I am not an expert in this matter, but this is a system which has been adopted very successfully in a number of countries, and I have no reason to suppose that it will not be successful in British Guiana.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport, I am glad to say, took this opportunity to express her praise of the police and of the British troops in British Guiana, and I am sure the whole House will wish to join with her and with me in expressing our appreciation.
The House may like to know that I have just heard from the Governor that the police, who are very efficient in this matter, have just discovered a number of deposits of arms buried underground in the sugar plantations, including submachine guns and quite a quantity of ammunition. I will not say any more on that matter today because investigations are going on, but I thought the House would like to know that the police are constantly vigilant in this matter.
The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East said that I had spoilt the reputation of my office by imposing an altogether one-sided solution. First, I should like to make it clear that I did not impose any solution at all. In 1962, when we had the conference in London, I might have decided, in view of the total deadlock between the parties, that the only thing to do was to impose a solution, and there were a lot of people who thought that that was the right thing to do. But I decided not to do so. Instead, I asked the delegates to go back to British Guiana, and to have further consultations among themselves to see if they could not reach agreement.
Again in 1963, when we had our conference last October, I might at a certain moment have said, "I will impose a solution". But I did not. I said perfectly clearly, "I am not willing to impose a solution. If you cannot agree among yourselves, then the conference must again be adjourned." But rather than see that happen, they decided to ask me to arbitrate and to take a decision, and they promised to accept the decision which I might take.
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) said that my past efforts to obtain agreement between them, which had been going on for a


year, both in London and when I went to British Guiana to talk to them on the spot, had led them to expect that I would take a decision—I think these were his words—"which would accommodate both sides".

Mr. Brockway: I was not referring to your past efforts. I was referring to your conduct—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir R. Grimston): Not my conduct, I hope.

Mr. Brockway: I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I was referring to the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman and the confidence which he created during the proceedings at the Lancaster House Conference.

Mr. Sandys: I am very glad of that. Not only in 1962, not only in British Guiana, but during the conference in 1963, too, I very genuinely tried, up to the last moment, to bring about agreement between the parties. It is not surprising, therefore, that they felt that I was sincere in my desire to find agreement, and that it was only in the event of failure to reach agreement that I was really prepared to consider arbitrating.
I assure hon. Members that it is no fun arbitrating in a matter of this kind. There has been reference to Malta. I was asked to arbitrate there, but I refused. There are some hot potatoes which I am not prepared to take hold of. [Laughter.]
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough said that it had been expected that I would take a decision which would accommodate both sides. Those were his words. I was at a loss to know what he meant. What was this solution which would accommodate both sides?

Mr. Brockway: I suggested it during my speech. I said that, when the mission of good will from Ghana went there, extraordinary concessions were made by Dr. Jagan's side and, if the right hon. Gentleman had followed these up, we might not have been in the situation we are now.

Mr. Sandys: All I can say is that the parties are still as far apart as they were before.
The hon. Gentleman said that I had acted not as an arbitrator but as a protagonist of one side, and the hon. Member

for Birmingham, Northfield at one point said very much the same. The duty of an arbitrator, in my view, is not to produce some unworkable compromise. It is to decide what he thinks best. We had been trying for two years to bring about agreement. Having failed in that, I should have produced the worst of all possible worlds if I had sat down and said, "I will give a bit to one side and a bit to the other and produce a system which is neither first past the post nor proportional representation but a mixture of the two; for example, the one for the upper Chamber and the other for the lower Chamber", or something like that. That would not have been a responsible thing to do. I was given the responsibility for doing what I thought was best for British Guiana, and that is what I did.
On this difficult question of proportional representation or first past the post, there is no doubt that the decision was bound to please one side and displease the other. No other result was possible. Those who asked me to arbitrate must have been fully alive to this. Of course, some may have thought that I would give a decision in their favour, and others might have thought that I would give it to them. I do not know. But no one could have been under any illusion but that the decision was bound to please one and displease the other.
The right hon. Member for Llanelly said that my decision would have the result of making a large section of the population feel that the new constitution had been imposed against their wishes.

Mr. J. Griffiths: I did not use the word "large". I spoke of a section.

Mr. Sandys: A section. This is so, of course, but the fact remains that the parties representing 57 per cent. of the electors at the last election were in favour of proportional representation; though I tell the House frankly that that is not the reason why I came to the decision I did: I came to it for the reasons I have already explained to the House on an earlier occasion. Therefore, my decision cannot be criticised on the ground that it was undemocratic.
In the absence of agreement, there were only two alternatives; to allow the situation to drift on without any decision and postpone independence indefinitely; or to leave it to the British Government


to take the decision. As I have said, the leaders in British Guiana decided to take the second course. They asked me to arbitrate and they promised to accept my ruling.
The right hon. Member for Llanelly recognised that both main parties are racial parties, yet—and this I find difficult to understand—he criticised proportional representation on the ground that no single party would get an absolute majority, and that this would make a coalition inevitable. But surely that is a most desirable result. That is what we have been trying to do all the time. We have been trying to get these parties to agree to form a coalition. We failed. If as a result of this decision of mine we bring about that result, I cannot see why the right hon. Gentleman would be unhappy about it.

Mr. J. Griffiths: No constitution will work unless there is a will to work it, and that means a will among both races to work together.

Mr. Sandys: We can all say that it would be very nice if they agreed and if they all worked happily together. But the basic problem is that they do not work together. Therefore, in one way or another, we must try to produce a system which will oblige them to work together; and that is the purpose of my decision. Whether it works out like that, I cannot say. All I can say is that no one in the course of this debate has suggested any other method.
The right hon. Member for Llanelly and others urged a postponement of the new constitution to give the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, at their conference, a chance to try their hand and to find a solution. On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport and others urged me in the opposite sense—to go ahead without any further delay. If I thought that the Prime Ministers' Conference were likely to produce an agreed solution, I should not hesitate, even at this stage, to hold everything up—I certainly would not.
But I ask hon. Members, what grounds there are for believing that, in the few hours available to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, they could find a basis for agreement when all others

have hitherto failed. The British Government have failed after two years of effort. The Government of Ghana, who recently sent a good will mission to British Guiana, failed also. As has been said in this debate, the Prime Ministers of the two Commonwealth countries most closely connected—Trinidad and Jamaica—hive said publicly that, although they do not like proportional representation in principle they could not see what else we could have done.
For these reasons, I do not believe that there would be any advantage in further prolonging the uncertainty. This could only increase the tension and with it, the danger of further violence. I believe therefore that we must go ahead with the plan, and we must hope—I have considerable confidence in it—that it will produce the results for which it was designed.
The hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) said that the aim of my decision was to defeat Dr. Jagan. I am glad to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay stood up for me and said that that was most unfair. The object of my decision was stated, I think the House will agree, with absolute and unequivocal frankness in the Report. There was no mincing of words. I said exactly what was in my mind—exactly the reasons which had led me to this decision. The objective of our policy remains unchanged. It is to give British Guiana independence as soon as can be done in conditions of peace and stability. That is our aim—independence. I assure the people of British Guiana that Britain gains no advantage by governing them. It is a military and financial burden, and causes us considerable international political embarrassment. The sooner we are relieved of these duties, the better we shall be pleased.
The sole reason for maintaining British rule is that we and the rest of the world, would think it irresponsible to get out in circumstances which would lead almost certainly to civil war between the two racial communities. British Guiana is plagued by mutual fear and suspicion between the Indians and the Negroes. Although each of them would like independence, neither wants it under the rule of the other. This intense inter-racial animosity has


largely been engendered in recent years by the identification of race with political parties. In fact, racial politics is at the root of the present trouble.
It is, therefore, one of the deliberate aims of our policy to encourage a realignment of political loyalties on multiracial lines. That is the main reason why, when asked to arbitrate, I decided in favour of proportional representation. After much thought and discussion, I was convinced that the introduction of this system offered the best hope of bringing about political groupings across the racial boundaries.
The aim of our policy can be stated quite simply. It is to bring back a sense of security and mutual trust, and to banish the fear which haunts that unhappy country. It is not such a long time ago that both races were able to live peaceably side by side. Nobody will dispute the rightness of our objective. Those who question the method by which we seek to achieve it have, as I have already said, suggested no alternative, other than to go on as we are. That is a counsel of despair, for there is no

reason to suppose that the disease would be cured by a policy of inaction and drift. A surgical operation is needed and that is what we are trying to perform.
All who care about the peace and happiness of British Guiana must surely wish us success. I therefore appeal to all parties, there and here, to give us their support and co-operation in this difficult, but essential task. I appeal to them also, as has been done by so many hon. Members today, to put an end to violence and bloodshed.

10.28 p.m.

Mr. Bottomley: Nobody can be in any doubt about the difficulties confronting the Secretary of State. What we are challenging is his judgment. Time, and time alone, will show who is right. I have placed on record the views of the Opposition and in view of the pleas which have been made that if we were to force a Division, this might exacerbate feelings and cause more violence, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

HOSPITAL MATERNITY FACILITIES, BLAENAU FFESTINIOG

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pym.]

Mr. T. W. Jones: As is so true of other voluntary institutions in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area, the Ffestiniog Hospital was built by funds raised by the quarry workers at the respective slate quarries. It was definitely intended that it should be a maternity hospital in addition to a hospital for general purposes and that the surplus funds after the creation of the hospital should be used expressly for that purpose.
In 1948, we had the introduction of the National Health Service, and not only the hospital, but the accumulated funds, were taken over by the State. It was naturally expected that the funds would be utilised for the purpose for which they had been collected, namely, to provide a maternity unit. In spite of repeated representations, the maternity unit has not been established, and the Minister's letter to me on 17th April last year and the one received by the local council from the Welsh Hospital Board, Cardiff, made it abundantly clear that it was not intended to establish a maternity unit.
It is unfortunate that both the former Minister of Health and the Welsh Hospital Board, according to their respective letters, have compiled their statistics exclusively on the population figures of the area of the Ffestiniog Urban District Council. I wish to emphasise tonight, however, that when we argue on behalf of a maternity unit connected with the hospital at Blaenau Ffestiniog we mean it to serve the needs not only of the Ffestiniog Urban Council area but also the major parts of the Deudraeth Rural Council area, with the outlying districts of Trawsfynydd, Gellilydan, Harlech, Maintwrog, Penrhyndeudraeth and Dolwyddelan—that is a mouthful. In this connection the resulting total number would then more than double that which is referred to in the letter I received from the Minister of Health.
Let me quote him to see what he said:
In the Ffestiniog Urban District there were 146 births in 1961 and 130 in 1962. Of these 17 were home confinements in 1961 and 12 in 1962.
Those are the statistics given to me by the former Minister, and I do not dispute them. I am most anxious to point out to the present Minister, however, that in the extended area which we envisage and propose that the maternity unit should serve, the medical officer's report for 1962 shows an average of 250 live births and of these only 30 were domiciliary.
The matter raised tonight has a human aspect which cannot be overlooked. The Minister will agree, I am sure, that in the case of a pregnant woman there should be a close and personal relationship between the doctor and his patient up to the actual birth of the child. The mothers of the Blaenau Ffestiniog area are today denied that human right. When the pregnant woman has signs of impending birth she is suddenly transported a distance of 35 miles, in most cases, to be placed in the charge of an utterly strange medical practitioner. It is most certainly psychologically wrong to have such strains and fears imposed at the very time when happy and relaxed atmospheres could and should be provided to the expectant mother.
What terrible roads she has to travel also, to get to her destination. I have handed to the Minister an Ordnance Survey map which gives some indication of the terrain which has to be negotiated with such heights as that of the Crimea Press, 1,263 ft., and the Capel Curig to Ogwen, 1,030 ft. The road conditions at their best are poor, and at their worst, in winter, impossible.
It is disquieting to note that, from time time, a number of births have taken place in ambulances on the road to the hospital at Bangor. There was one as recently as last January. Only last month I received a letter from a constituent which I am anxious to quote:
I am a 25 years' old native of Blaenau Ffestiniog with a 19 years' old wife who had the misfortune of losing her second born child on Friday 13th March. Hence this letter to you, Sir, as my Member of Parliament, in order to express my most profound disgust at the deplorable lack of maternity facilities in this area. I feel sure in my own mind that had my wife had access to the treatment and


assistance that all pregnant women have the right to expect she would not have to suffer the loss of her second child. I feel sure I speak for a large number of people in this town when I say we should have a Maternity Hospital in Blaenau Ffestiniog, for it seems to me that 35 miles to Bangor is too far to expect an expectant mother to travel, especially when haemorrhage starts, as was the case of my wife.
So, Sir, I appeal to you. Can something be done to stop this suffering and wanton waste of life? I would hope so most fervently, and if you were successful in having a Maternity Hospital for here we should all owe you a deep debt of gratitude.
That is a letter which cannot fail to touch our hearts. I would use the last sentence again in applying it to the Minister on my own behalf. I would say to him that if he would provide a maternity hospital at Blaenau Ffestiniog we would all owe him a deep debt of gratitude.
It should not be overlooked that it is also a very costly business for relatives to visit a woman sent to Bangor, and I am certain that if anyone should be visited it is the daughter and wife who has just given birth to a child. We have heard a great deal from time to time about the supposed two beds which are available for obstetric emergencies at Ffestiniog Hospital, but we are told that no use has been made of this accommodation by the local general practitioners.
Let me say at once that, for all practical purposes, these two beds are nonexistent. I make that claim on the strength of a letter received by the local council clerk from Dr. Owen Glyn Jones, a highly respected medical practitioner at Blaenau Ffestiniog. He wrote:
I was told quite definitely by Mr. G. L. Williams, Group Secretary, and Dr. Alban Jones, Welsh Board of Health, that Blaenau Hospital had no maternity beds. The Welsh Hospital Board and the Welsh Board of Health have permitted our hospital to accept emergency maternity cases only. This means that I as a General Practitioner in Blaenau cannot admit a case to Blaenau Hospital if, for example, home conditions are unsuitable, or the expectant mother has no one to attend her after the confinement. I asked Dr. Macfarlane to send cases that were being discharged from St. David's Hospital, Bangor, on the 2nd–4th days after confinement and sent to Bryn Beryl, Pwllheli, to come here to Blaenau Hospital to our supposed two maternity beds but even this is against the rules and cannot be done.
I think it is high time that this 'red herring' of two maternity emergency beds in the local

hospital should be fully understood and that the local General Practitioners shall not in future be blamed for not using them.
It will therefore be seen that for practical purposes the so-called two-bed unit is non-existent.
I will say in conclusion that with an estimated population of 15,000 in the area I have mentioned and with the nearest general hospital 35 miles away, the provision of a maternity unit of six to eight beds could be made viable. Perhaps I should add that the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog has a brighter industrial prospect than it has had for a number of years. Depopulation has been stemmed and a new factory is to built there this year. Nearby is the new large nuclear power station at Trawsfynydd. There is every indication that population in the area will grow steadily.
In the light of all that I have said, I hope that my plea will not again be in vain. Before the Parliamentary Secretary turns down my plea, I invite him to visit Blaenau Ffestiniog to discuss the whole question with the local council and general practitioners. I will gladly convene such a meeting. I should prefer him to declare tonight that he has views on this subject different from those of his predecessors. I ask him not to come to any conclusions until he has seen for himself the situation in this town, and I invite him to come there at any time he chooses.

10.41 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Bernard Braine): The hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. T. W. Jones) has argued his case with great eloquence. I have listened to him very carefully and of course I know the interest which he has shown in the subject of the provision of hospital facilities in Merioneth over a good many years. In an Adjournment debate on 10th February, 1960, he complained about the facilities for outpatients attending the Dolgellau Hospital. At that time, the Welsh Hospital Board's other commitments did not permit any improvements being effected. These were promised for 1962–63 and, I am glad to say, have now been provided at the Llwyn View Hospital, across the road from the Dolgellau Hospital, and include a waiting room, reception room, consulting rooms, changing cubicles,


plaster room and X-ray facilities, at a cost of about £18,000.
In the same Adjournment debate, the hon. Gentleman made a very strong plea for the establishment of a maternity unit at Blaenau Ffestiniog and on 27th March, last year, he saw my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) on the same subject.
While one has a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Member, or for any hon. Member who wants to improve facilities for his constituents, the Welsh Hospital Board has the responsibility for looking at the needs of Wales as a whole and ensuring a fair distribution of available resources. It may be helpful, therefore, if I say something about the nature of the problem with a view to seeing whether the hon. Gentleman's complaint is justified.
As I know from personal experience, Merioneth is a beautiful county; it is also very mountainous and sparsely populated. Of its total population of about 38,000, more than one third lives in the north-west in Ffestiniog and neighbourhood where the main industrial activity is slate mining. Otherwise, it is essentially a rural community. Dolgellau is the county town. Barmouth and Towyn are attractive seaside resorts. Communications are difficult, especially during the winter months. There are three cottage hospitals—at Ffestiniog, Dolgellau and Towyn, where the work is done by local practitioners with regular sessions from visiting consultant staff. For the more important treatments, medical and surgical, patients are referred to the major hospitals within the respective group—Caernarvon and Anglesey Hospital, Bangor, in the north; the Wrexham hospitals to the east; and Aberystwyth General Hospital to the south.
Maternity beds in the county are found at Barmouth Maternity Home, Towyn Hospital, and Dolgellau Maternity Home. The main obstetric unit for the area is at St. David's Hospital, Bangor, which of course is outside the county. It is natural that the hon. Gentleman should want to see that his constituents have a proper share of the available resources. On the other hand, the Welsh Hospital Board has a responsibility for the Principality as a

whole. What we have to be sure about is that the hon. Gentleman's area is not ill served compared with the rest of the country.
I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I quote some statistics, but this is the only fair way of setting out the position. The live birth rate per thousand population in the county is 16·8 compared with 17·1 for Wales and 18·0 for England and Wales. The stillbirth rate was 20 compared with 22 for Wales and 18 for England and Wales. The infant mortality rate, that is deaths under one year per thousand live births, was 25 compared with 25 for Wales as a whole and 22 for England and Wales. The perinatal death rate, that is deaths under one week plus stillbirths per thousand live and stillbirths, was 29 compared with 36 for Wales and 31 for England and Wales. Unfortunately, there were two maternal deaths in 1962, giving a death rate of 3·0 compared with 0·41 for Wales and 0·35 for England and Wales, but there were no maternal deaths in 1960 or 1961 and only one in 1959.
In 1962 there were 650 babies born to mothers living in Merioneth, and of these 591, that is 90·9 per cent., were born in hospitals or maternity homes. I am bound to tell the hon. Gentleman that this compares with national figures of 66·2 per cent. for England and Wales, and 70·1 per cent. for Wales alone in the same year. In 1963 institutional confinements amounted to 581 out of 632, a rate of 92·1 per cent. compared with 73 per cent. for Wales as a whole.
I have quoted those figures because they show that hospital confinements for Merioneth are well above the Cranbrook recommendation of 70 per cent. They also establish that hospital facilities in the area are not only adequate, but that about 90 per cent. of mothers go to hospital. They clearly prefer to do so rather than have their babies at home, notwithstanding the difficulties that some may encounter in travelling. I am not making light of the point about travelling made by the hon. Gentleman. In this connection, it is worth noting that the percentage of births in hospital to Blaenau Ffestiniog mothers is marginally higher than for the County of Merioneth as a whole.
It is true that the hon. Gentleman is complaining not about the number of hospital beds available in the area, but that none is provided in Blaenau Ffestiniog itself. What the hon. Gentleman would like to see established is a small general practitioner unit.
I fully understand that the overriding consideration in all this is what really serves the interests of the mothers and babies of this part of Wales. I know that that is what has motivated him, and that that is why he has raised this matter tonight. I am sure that he knows his constituency pretty well. He will know that there are very good relations between the general practitioners, hospitals, and local authority services in his constituency. The standard of those services is reflected in the statistics that I have quoted. The standard is high.
What really seems to be in the best interests of the hon. Gentleman's constituents is the availability of first-rate maternity units strategically placed to ensure the proper deployment of highly trained staff. Admittedly we could put a small unit at Blaenau Ffestiniog, but that would be at the expense of providing one really effective unit covering the whole area. I know that the hon. Gentleman's argument sounds superficially attractive, but I am advised that medically speaking it would not provide the best possible care for mothers and their babies.
I regret that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the case of the baby born on the way to Bangor Hospital, because it seemed that the inference he was drawing was that when mothers have to travel any distance an occurrence of that kind is frequent. I assure him that nature sometimes defeats the best man-made arrangements, and it also happens from time to time in heavily built up areas where the mother's home is on the doorstep of the hospital. It happens in London and it happens in the great city of Cardiff.
As regards the second distressing case to which he referred, I deeply sympathise with the writer of the letter, but I do not feel that I can comment on it because it is clear from what was said that there was a medical complication.
I can assure the hon. Member that there is nothing unusual in what is being

planned by the Welsh Hospital Board for Merioneth as a whole. What we are seeking to do, not only in North Wales but throughout the country, is to provide a comprehensive hospital service which takes into account the changes occurring all the time in concepts of medical care—a service which will ensure that patients everywhere will get the best treatment that modern medicine can provide.
In recent years there has been a trend towards greater interdependence between the various branches of medicine. Most patients needing in-patient hospital care nowadays require the attention not only of a physician or surgeon but also of other specialists such as radiologists, pathologists and anaesthetists in support. Essentially, the patient's treatment is provided by a team, and the team needs to have at its disposal complicated and expensive equipment. To work efficiently in the service of the patient, the team must spend the major part of its time at a large district general hospital; and it is at these hospitals where the necessarily wide range of diagnostic and treatment facilities can be provided.
This is clearly the best method of employing to the full the resources, in terms of staff as well as money, avaliable to the hospital service. It is not possible to spread the most up-to-date facilities over a larger number of smaller hospitals and, at the same time, ensure for the patient the best that modern medicine can provide. I stress this because our first consideration in these matters must always be the patient.
The Welsh Hospital Board envisages the development of four district general hospitals—at Bangor, Aberystwyth, Rhyl and Wrexham. These hospitals will all have maternity units with full and continuous consultant cover and every facility available. In addition, the Board proposes to provide at Llwyn View, Dolgellau, a new unit of about 15 beds to cover the needs of Merioneth. This will be a sizeable unit.
In his letter of 17th April, 1963, to the hon. Member, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West pointed out that the total number of births in a year in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area could be set at a maximum of 150. Allowing for at least half of these to be at a consultant obstetric unit would leave


no more than 70 to 80 to be confined either at home or in a general practitioner maternity unit. My right hon. Friend's letter concluded that the number of births at the general practitioner unit would justify only two beds, which would be quite impracticable. To provide a round-the-clock maternity service, at least four qualified midwives would be required, and for a unit of two beds they would be employed for only a small part of their time. Experienced midwives would be reluctant to serve in such a unit and, in any event, it would be a wasteful use of midwifery resources. If we enlarged the catchment area, as the hon. Member suggests, and provided for, say, a maximum of 250 live births, I am advised that this would still not provide a viable unit.
I note what the hon. Member said about the two beds at Blaenau Ffestiniog Hospital, a general practitioner hospital of 16 beds. These, of course, are not regarded as maternity beds but are available, as all the general practitioners know, for exceptional circumstances. The matron and one member of the staff at the hospital are qualified in midwifery. It has been necessary to take advantage of these beds only once in recent years—there was one emergency birth at the hospital last year. I hope that that disposes of the "red herring" which the hon. Member mentioned. We do not regard these as normal maternity beds.
I agree with the hon. Member that travelling in rural areas, especially in winter conditions, can be extremely

difficult. But this is not a problem peculiar to Blaenau Ffestiniog. It is one that could be multiplied time and again in rural areas throughout the country, particularly in Wales. If resources, both manpower and material, were unlimited, claims such as this one could be met but, with limited resources, concentration on the broad pattern outlined in the Hospital Plan is the only sensible way to proceed. This is a matter of striking the right balance between the claims of particular districts and the need to deploy our available resources, especially of trained midwives and nurses, so that we provide the best possible medical care for the country as a whole.
We are anxious to put to the best possible use the available nursing and midwifery skills and to encourage non-practising midwives to resume practice either full time or part time. I can hardly think that they would be encouraged by a wasteful deployment of skill which—despite the great eloquence with which he advanced his case and the great skill with which he deployed his argument—the hon. Member is asking us to do. It would be a wasteful deployment of skilled resources. I feel sure that on reflection he will see that what we are seeking to do is to serve the best interests of the mothers and babies in this very beautiful part of Wales.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.